It seems incomprehensible to anyone in a developed nation: North Korea may only have a few dozen websites its citizens can access.
That's right, a few dozen.
And look at the World Bank's estimate for North Korean internet usage. A total goose egg a few years ago that reportedly has jumped to 0.1% as of 2017.
North Korea a growing cyber threat
Despite this, we've known for a long time that the North Korean government is growing in its abilities as a nation-state cyber threat, and that it has become the number three threat to the United States according to experts SecureWorld has interviewed.
And it's likely North Korean hackers recently stole South Korean and U.S. war plans the two nations had agreed on. And North Korea was recently caught targeting the U.S. power grid for a cyber attack.
How North Korea has thousands of hackers
So how does a country like North Korea build such a powerful hacking network? A New York Times article sheds some serious light on this. It says North Korea's hacker network numbers more than 6,000 of the best and brightest minds in the country.
The article explains that North Korea takes computer prodigies and molds them into hackers. And it offers many of them a rare opportunity: the chance to live outside the country while hacking for the nation-state. In fact, the Times reports that a large percentage of the North Korean attacks come from traffic originating in India.
Is Russia helping North Korea with internet access?
In a country where sanctions create a lot of technological barriers, even bandwidth is tough to come by.
Is it possible Russia may now be helping North Korea with this problem? Dyn researchers say they've detected a new path of web traffic between North Korea and Russia that suggests this is the case.
There is still more to come on North Korea's growing cyber attack capabilities. But we know this much for certain: the nation's leaders see cyber as a key tool for victory in its fight against the outside world.
