With that in mind, GitHub earlier today revealed the full extent of North Korean websites that can be accessed by outsiders, and as you might expect, it’s a small list consisting of just 28 domains. “Pacific time, North Korea’s nameserver – that contains information about all of the “.kp” websites – was misconfigured, allowing it to be accessed.
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North Korea’s zone file has leaked online, providing another insight into the hermit kingdom’s internet. “This allows anyone who performs [a zone transfer request] to the country’s ns2.kptc.kp name server to get a copy of the nation’s top level DNS data”.
North Korea is famously secretive and restrictive – the regime goes to great lengths to both prevent the outside world from learning what goes on there and prevent its citizens from learning about the outside world.
“This was detected by the TL;DR Project, an effort to attempt zone transfers against all top-level domain name servers every two hours and keep a running GitHub repo with the resulting data”.
It’s sometimes said that too much choice can be a bad thing, but that’s evidently not something North Korea’s internet users have to deal with.
– North Korean news kiyctc.com.kp. knic.com.kp.
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Usually, this kind of data is only available to top-level domain registrars only. But most have a process by which you can apply to gain access, often for no charge. (Links can be found at the GitHub post and at the Reddit thread on the topic here.) There’s also a website for Air Koryo, North Korea’s state-owned airline, the Maskiryong ski resort, and more. This appeared to be a different site from the one hacked in June. One site, Rodong.rep.kp also came with a dedicated section titled “Supreme Leader’s Activities”, which detailed the various contributions made by the dictator, including heralding the supposed transformation of the country’s youngsters into “Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist’s”, the nation’s only youth organisation.
