US: Hacker shuts N Korea's internet in revenge

The hacker, who goes by the handle P4x, was a victim of a hacking campaign last year targeting Western security researchers.

However, he had managed to prevent hackers from getting anything of value from him.

After waiting for a year to see a visible response by the US government against North Korea's strike, P4x decided to give Pyongyang a dose of their own medicine. 

"It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don't see we have teeth, it's just going to keep coming," Wired quoted him as saying. "I want them to understand that if you come at us, it means some of your infrastructure is going down for a while." 

The hacker had refused to reveal his name over fear of prosecution or retaliation. P4x said he found several known but unpatched vulnerabilities in North Korean systems that have allowed him to single-handedly launch "denial-of-service" attacks on the servers and routers the country's few internet-connected networks depend on, Wired reported. Since then, he has kept a periodical check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of entire North Korea. 

According to P4x, he intends to continue to annoy the North Korean regime but not the population who lacks internet access. 

"I definitely wanted to affect the people as little as possible and the government as much as possible," P4x said, adding that his attacks were similar to "tearing down government banners or defacing buildings". 

About his future plans in taking revenge against the regime, he told Wired that how would not try to actually hack into North Korean systems to steal information and share it with experts. 

He also plans to recruit more hacktivists to his cause with a dark website, which he launched on January 31, called the FUNK Project — "FU North Korea".