For a brief period of time, someone in control of North Korea’s internet may have pressed the wrong button as the country’s 28 websites briefly escaped into the real world and have now been archived.
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This allowed anybody who performed a specific request “to get a copy of the nation’s top level DNS data”.
This week, one of the sites had accidentally been “left open” – allowing us all to see into this hidden world.
An impressive crowd-sourcing exercise on Reddit has shed light on the functions of some of the different sites.
According to reports, majority of the leaked sites are dedicated to describing everyday activities of the nation’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un. His discovery soon made its way to Reddit, where thousands of users quickly began exploring the websites they found. North Korea has a history of attempting to fool global travellers into thinking it is prospering, despite horrific food shortages and claims of human rights violations.
And seeing as only a small portion of its 24.9 million population actually has access to the internet, it’s not a huge surprise that there are just 28 public websites. Most of the sites are extremely slow to load or entirely inaccessible. Another – cooks.org.kp – showed off recipes, while korfilm.com.kp was devoted to North Korean movies.
In other words, a snafu by North Korea’s system administrators allowed anyone to ask the country’s nameserver: “can I have all of your information on this domain?” and get an answer, giving everyone a peek into the odd world of North Korea’s web.
North Korea conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test to date on September 9, claiming it as a successful nuclear warhead detonation that proved its ability to mass produce “standardized” nuclear weapons that could be used on missiles.
“When North Korea brings up a new website they never publicise it”.
The mistake was reportedly uncovered by programmer Matthew Bryant, who told Motherboard how he was unsurprised by the miniscule “complete list of domain names”.
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North Korea has suffered another embarrassing setback on the world scene after a major leak gave the world a look into its online capabilities.
