He acknowledges that his attacks amount to no more than “tearing down government banners or defacing buildings,” as he puts it. “I definitely wanted to affect the people as little as possible and the government as much as possible,” P4x says. “But if he just wants to annoy North Korea, then he is probably being annoying.”įor his part, P4x says he would count annoying the regime as a success, and that the vast majority of the country's population that lacks internet access was never his target. “I would say, if he's going after those people, he's probably directing his attentions to the wrong place,” says Williams. While knocking out those sites no doubt presents a nuisance to some regime officials, Williams points out that the hackers who targeted P4x last year-like almost all the country's hackers-are almost certainly based in other countries, such as China. Williams says the dozens of sites P4x has repeatedly taken down are largely used for propaganda and other functions aimed at an international audience. The vast majority of residents are confined to the country's disconnected intranet. Only a tiny fraction of North Koreans have access to internet-connected systems to begin with, says Martyn Williams, a researcher for the Stimson Center think tank's North Korea-focused 38 North Project. (P4x spoke to WIRED and shared screen recordings to verify his responsibility for the attacks but declined to use his real name for fear of prosecution or retaliation.) “I want them to understand that if you come at us, it means some of your infrastructure is going down for a while.”Īs rare as it may be for a single pseudonymous hacker to cause an internet blackout on that scale, it's far from clear what real effects the attacks have had on the North Korean government. If they don’t see we have teeth, it’s just going to keep coming,” says the hacker. “It felt like the right thing to do here. So after a year of letting his resentment simmer, P4x has taken matters into his own hands. But he nonetheless felt deeply unnerved by state-sponsored hackers targeting him personally-and by the lack of any visible response from the US government. He says he managed to prevent those hackers from swiping anything of value from him. P4x was just one victim of a hacking campaign that targeted Western security researchers with the apparent aim of stealing their hacking tools and details about software vulnerabilities. Just over a year ago, an independent hacker who goes by the handle P4x was himself hacked by North Korean spies.
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