Hacker who 'brought down North Korea's internet for over a week' reveals one thing it taught him about the country
A hacker who incredibly 'brought down North Korea’s internet for over a week' has revealed one thing that it taught him about the country.
The hacker, who goes by the name of P4x, gave people online the chance to 'ask him anything' about how he took down the country’s internet network.
He shared how he worked alone at his home in Florida to complete the hack.
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In April, the hacker’s true identity was unveiled by Wired as Alejandro Caceres, a 38-year-old Colombian-American cybersecurity entrepreneur.
Why did he hack North Korea's internet?
The publication said that Caceres had been targeted by North Korean spies who had tried to steal his intrusion tools.
Afterwards, the hacker decided to enact some revenge by targeting every available public website in North Korea and kept them offline for over a week.
Speaking to Wired, he said: “It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don’t see we have teeth, it’s just going to keep coming.”
Now, after this impressive feat, Caceres has spoken out in a lengthy Reddit thread - and offered for anyone to ask him a question about it.
“Recently I was on NPR’s The World and a bunch of other sh**,” he penned on the social media platform.
“Anyway, AMA about the hack, personal stuff, whatever! Happy to answer. I have not yet been murdered or arrested, so that’s pretty good.”
Of course, the first question is whether it was 'hard' to take down North Korea's network, to which he replied: “Honestly I’ve been asked this a lot. And I can’t really tell haha. I used to say nah it wasn’t that hard.
“But then I told people how I did it and they were like ‘well ok, it wasn’t hard but only because you’re trained in this….’”
One user asked the hacker if there was anything he was taught about North Korea from his hacking, he responded simply: "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."
While another Reddit user asked the hacker what he feels are the most likely consequences as a result of his actions.
However, he says he hasn’t faced any negative repercussions - as of yet.
“Everyone seems to sort of like it but cannot say that officially. Honestly, I expected a LOT more negativity just because that’s the natural order of things.” he said, adding that the only “consequences” he’d faced was “intelligence agencies” asking him how he did it.
And finally, a third person asked: “Do they show up at your door in trench coats like in the movies? Or do you just get an email and a Team meeting invite?”
“We actually did it in a basement a couple of times lol. It was super X-Files type s**t but also like any normal meeting. Weird dissonance…” Caceres answered.