A new report sheds light on how North Korea's senior leadership is changing how it uses the Internet, which has evolved into a professional tool its leaders use to generate revenue and evade international sanctions and controls meant to block certain technologies and operations.
Recorded Future researchers have seen a 300% increase in the volume of activity to and from North Korean networks since 2017. They attribute the spike to multiple drivers: greater use of the Russian-routed TransTelekom infrastructure, use of previously unresolved North Korean IP space, and new mail servers, FTP servers, and DNS name servers to maintain higher traffic flow.
Few people in North Korea are permitted direct access to the global Internet. This research is focused on the activities of these few people, primarily government leaders and ruling elite. It's believed the observed changes in network administration over the past six months are likely in response to higher Internet demand from North Korean users both at home and abroad. An Internet-enabled mail server, for example, indicates need for people to remotely access email.
It's clear, the researchers report, that the Internet has shifted from a "fascination" or "leisure activity" to a serious revenue-generation tool. Weekdays are now the most popular time for Internet use, compared with weekends and evenings in 2017. This, combined with the 300% increase in activity and higher bandwidth, denotes greater focus on harnessing the Internet.
The regime has tried to hide its increased Internet use with operational security technologies like virtual private networks, virtual private servers, transport layer security, and the Tor browser, among others. In 2019 it introduced DNS tunneling and demonstrated just how tech-savvy North Korea's leaders ..
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