North Korea internet outage: Affected services, cause and more

North Korea reportedly experienced an internet significant outage on Saturday (June 7), lasting several hours and disrupting access to government websites and official news services. The widespread disruption effectively severed the nation from global cyberspace. While the cause of the outage remains unclear, researchers monitoring North Korea's internet and technology infrastructure suggest it was likely an internal issue rather than a cyberattack.According to news agency Reuters, the assessment is based on the fact that connections through both China and Russia, typically used by North Korea, were also affected.

Key websites including that of foreign ministry, national airline affected

During the outage, key North Korean websites, including its main official news services, the Foreign Ministry, and the national airline Air Koryo, were inaccessible. Service began to slowly return around midday, according to checks conducted by the news agency.

As per a UK-based researcher who monitors North Korea's internet, even email services were impacted. “Hard to say if this is intentional or accidental - but seems like this is internal rather than an attack,” the researcher said.Martyn Williams, an expert on North Korea's technology and infrastructure at the Washington-based Stimson Center, also said that the internal nature of the problem was indicated by the non-functioning Chinese and Russian connections.In previous years, North Korea has faced extensive internet outages that were suspected to be the result of cyberattacks. The nation is claimed to have operated sophisticated elite teams of hackers, including the government-backed Lazarus group, which has been implicated in attacks against foreign institutions and companies, and more recently, in the theft and laundering of cryptocurrencies.