A state-owned Russian telecommunications firm has given North Korea a new Internet connection – potentially increasing Pyongyang’s ability to stage cyberattacks and helping protect the embattled country’s Internet infrastructure.
The new connection was first spotted by Internet analysts at Dyn Research, who noted that a new connection for North Koreans provided by the Russian firm TransTeleCom appeared in Internet routing databases about 5:38 p.m. Pyongyang time Sunday.
The new connection appears to supplement a previously existing connection run by China Unicom that has been in operation since 2010. With two connections, experts argue, North Korean Internet users could expect a higher international bandwidth capacity and greater resilience to attacks.
On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that a U.S. Cyber Command operation had been targeting hackers in North Korea’s military spy agency.
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