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Leaked data reveals that North Korea only has 28 websites

A technical mishap has given the world an insight into North Korea's web presence - and discovere...
Newstalk
Newstalk

15.20 21 Sep 2016


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Leaked data reveals that North...

Leaked data reveals that North Korea only has 28 websites

Newstalk
Newstalk

15.20 21 Sep 2016


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A technical mishap has given the world an insight into North Korea's web presence - and discovered there are only 28 websites operating under the country's .kp domain.

Programmer Matthew Bryant explained on Github: "On Sept 19, 2016 at approximately 10:00PM (PDT), one of North Korea's top level nameservers was accidentally configured to allow global DNS zone transfers."

This allowed anybody who performed a specific request "to get a copy of the nation's top level DNS data".

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DNS stands for Domain Name System, which is a key internet system that allows familiar web addresses to be converted into numerical IP addresses and therefore located by a web browser.

The data revealed that there are only 28 .kp websites.

As well as news and media sites, other .kp pages are dedicated to several of the secretive country's public services, such as a site for the Air Koryo airline.

Others focus on the likes of the country's food and university, as well as various government departments and initiatives.

Many of the websites' homepages contain references to the country's leader Kim Jong-Un, and have only very basic web design.

Screenshot: www.vok.rep.kp/

Several of the websites listed have been largely inaccessible in the days since the DNS data become public, potentially as a result of increased international traffic.

Wired reports that the 28 websites registered to the .kp domain makes it the smallest 'top-level' domain in the world.


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