Man who briefly took down North Korea's Internet posts on r/AMA, some of the questions include:
Would it be possible to hack their internet in such a way that you could have opened a pipeline from their limited NK-only intranet to the outside internet? Or is that so walled off that it wouldn’t be feasible? Giving citizens access to the outside world would be an interesting thing to see them deal with.
To which he answered:
That would be amazing. It’s definitely a huge goal of mine. I’d say it should be possible. But it may be somewhat difficult depending on their setup. From what i’ve seen they aren’t great at setting stuff up, so I’m absolutely going to try!
You allegdedly committed a cyber crime, and we've seen "good hackers" get punished for their good deeds before.
Do you have any concerns that you'll be targeted by authorities?
To which he answered:
Actually the US government was far far more a concern than NK. However now I’ve done work in the space of sort of what they called “guerrilla/unconventional warfare” for folks in the DoD because of this. I’m also working with the folks that would be the ones arresting me and they gave me a nice unofficial commendation (a challenge coin if you’re familiar). I suppose there are other entities that could come after me but I think it’s tough to, I don’t know. But will there be a legal case of “North Korea vs P4x”? Who would take that on even! We don’t even consider NK a country, they’re a terrorist state officially. So I hit back at a bunch of terrorists that attacked me. I probably broke some international shit but 🤷.
Was there anything you learned about NK while you were bringing down the house?
To which he answered:
They suck at Internet. Their internet is little sticks and glue. Even better though, I learned they have only two routers of egress and ingress of the Internet. What I eventually ended up doing was focusing a lot of bandwidth on those routers . It took down all routing into and out of the country. Along with conventional DoS like memory exhaustion and just a lot of bandwidth hitting them, when those two routers came down it was game over.
It wasn’t just a DoS on their infra, it actually took down all routing. The errors people got were “there is no route to host” which was awesome to see honestly!
Those are only some of the comments, those that went against the narrative of "North Korea evil 1984" were expected ly downvoted.
I don’t know what world this dumbass lives in.
We don’t even consider NK a country, they’re a terrorist state officially. So I hit back at a bunch of terrorists that attacked me. I probably broke some international shit but 🤷.
Tell that to the UN I guess. Both North Korea and South Korea were simultaneously admitted to the UN in 1991 as full body member countries, and were offered all the protections that come with being a signatory and member of the UN.
The US could have easily vetoed their membership, but didn’t, so the US obviously doesn’t consider them a “terrorist state”. And you’ve admitted to committing several high level international crimes.
But will there be a legal case of “North Korea vs P4x”? Who would take that on even!
Interpol dumbass. Their second largest branch is dedicated to cyber crimes. Wow, tech bros really are the stupidest people on the planet huh
Actually the US government was far far more a concern than NK. However now I’ve done work in the space of sort of what they called “guerrilla/unconventional warfare” for folks in the DoD because of this. I’m also working with the folks that would be the ones arresting me and they gave me a nice unofficial commendation (a challenge coin if you’re familiar)
lmao they do it for free
It’s so the CIA can say he acted alone, and then shove him under the bus when Interpol comes knocking lmao
This is actually incredibly embarrassing… why is he calling the DPRK a terrorist state that “attacked” him? What did they ever actually do to him? I’m sure the citizens of the DPRK are well aware of the outside world and don’t need some guy from Reddit to “open” their internet. They treat these people like they’re aliens from another planet that need to be exposed to “civilization,” it’s super weird.
Yeah Americans truly, honestly believe that the DPRK is 1984. They listen to Yeonmi Park speak and they say "yeah that sounds right." They think that the people there worship Kim Jong-Un as a literal god and that they're all starving all the time (and that that's because the evil government employees are all 9000 pounds from eating all the country's food maliciously and not because of the deliberate and explicit efforts by the US-aligned states to starve them). They think that no one there has ever seen any form of artwork that wasn't evil insidious propaganda about Kim the God, and that no one in the country has ever lived a "normal" day in their life.
None of this is even the slightest exaggeration, this is what literally 99% of Americans who think they know anything about the DPRK fully believe.
Is it appropriate to call this line of thinking “orientalist?” Because thats what it feels like. With how active the DPRK is becoming nowadays I can only hope that the propaganda loses steam as more people realize that it’s just a normal country under a shit load of sanctions. It may just be my side of the internet but I’m seeing a lot more people brushing off Yeonmi Park as a liar and a joke, so thats cool.
In any case I hope one day in the near future I’ll be able to visit.
Americans will believe anything about foreigners that you tell them. There is no amount of educating that will fix it unfortunately. The solution is making Americans irrelevant in global politics. I mean the people largely are anyways, they are just cheerleaders at the Superbowl.
I'm reading this now, incredible cringe coming from this dork. Also, the only thing he did was realize that NK has only 2 routers for incoming and outgoing traffic and he DDOSed them offline. WOWEEE elite hacking ablilities!!!!!
I really hope interpol arrests this guy, but would the US intervene or something, or just quietly get whoever would be responsible for the arrest to drop the case?
They would publicly humiliate him as a rouge actor, let Interpol persecute him, then probably pressure the court for a heavily reduced sentence. Probably a meager few months, or a year or so, in prison for the optics.
He’s not a CIA agent or part of the military, so I don’t see any reason for them to rabidly defend him.
Giving citizens access to the outside world would be an interesting thing to see them deal with.
Zero self awareness in people like this. Live in a western alphabet agency bubble of information, but think others are sheltered.
I finally built up the courage to urinate on a homeless person AMA
Beware of the real and only master hacker.
So, what is the point of doing such things? I wouldnt dare to do something like that, because it is hard to know which implications this has. I do not want to start a conflict with an entire state. Do they think the western country in which you live will protect you from everything?
So, what is the point of doing such things?
He wrote:
a bunch of terrorists that attacked me.
What the fuck is he talking about? The DPRK is a country under sanctions and is probably preparing for another war in the Pacific. They have better shit to worry about than some nerd in the Anglosphere who can take out a couple of routers.
Then again, if he seriously can’t think of anything better to do with his time than inconvenience hundreds of innocent people for the lulz, maybe ‘terrorists’ have a good reason for ‘attacking’ him. (Assuming that he was the one who did all of this, which I somehow doubt.)
The lulz originate from his sense of racial supremacy. All these people don't think of others as people with lives that have needs like Internet access. The other reddit losers are also racist and obviously attach themselves like barnacles to the SS SS.
The “ terrorists that attacked me” comment is what confuses me the most, because what did they do? No, seriously, what did they do for him to say this shit? I highly doubt any North Korean was posing a threat to him, at best maybe someone contacted him to call him an asshole. This is so wild to me. He seems to claim to “care” about the citizens but calls them terrorists anyway. Wild shit.
The guy(in another post i found) got somehow hacked by a script kiddie and then later(I did not understand how) he found out that the hacker was from DPRK, he did link a post to a newsletter covering a wave of attacks by "DPRK hackers". I did not get a good understanding of his whole charade, but he seems to be just salty that his OPSEC got fucked by a skiddie from "DPRK" lmfao
If he did the same thing to any western country's internet, I think we all know what he would be called (a terrorist). And arguably, it wouldn't even be incorrect. Maybe there would be less tangible damage done than if they had bombed public utilities and infrastructure like a bridge or power plant, but even in a country of several million (NK is 26 million) chances are that the disruption of internet across the country and its probable effects on emergency services would result in at least a few deaths or injuries.
I hope NK sends interpol at him. Hell, if nothing came of that (it wouldn't, probably) I hope they deal with him the way terrorists should be dealt with otherwise- assassination, perhaps, for instance. Letting some lone-wolf scumbag who doesn't even have the official backing and protections of a state or larger organization get away with these sorts of actions is asking for trouble after all.
If someone did the same thing to the US, no doubt they'd be on the manhunt for them- and they'd have the backing of much of their population to do so, also.
Giving citizens access to the outside world
They have access to the outside world. They have limited access to the western world, but there was a whole faculty at the university I went to there with many other foreigners. Plenty of students study foreign language and international studies. They have plenty of western-style restaurants, I had pretty good pizza there, just not all of the precious brand names.
These people always act like the DPRK is some kind of tribal village that has no contact with the rest of the planet. If you suddenly open up the internet to them, it wouldn't be the massive culture shock that westerners think. There would be surprising things, sure, but it wouldn't blow their mind.
They suck at Internet.
Actually, quite the opposite. They are excellent IT workers really. I am in that field and there has been instances recently of companies hiring remote contract workers to later find out they are actually from the DPRK. They don't do anything malicious, they just do good work. The only issue is the company could possibly end up in violation of sanctions, or they probably wouldn't care.
What I eventually ended up doing was focusing a lot of bandwidth on those routers .
Wow, what an elite brave hacker. He...performed a DDOS attack. What a regular Crash Override, I hope he put on his typing gloves before attempting such a fearsome hack.
DDOS attack a day keeps a boot on my face!
Brother worked with the letter agencies, no wonder he is like this.
Just in case anyone wants to see more discussion of this, hexbear had a thread here
So according to the posts he spent $80,000 of his own money to buy cloud services, DoS 2 routers for a day, then is suprised the CIA didn't hire him.
I should launch a website where you pay $5 USD for a single botnet instance to DDOS a rented VPS in the DPRK, for 5 minutes. All profits would secretly go to funding the DPRK's missile program.
a skiddie trying luck with a target that will make it a "relatively based" skiddie between the rightoids, and a pathetic moron in the left
