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Hunting for North Korean Fiber Optic Cables

(nkinternet.com)
288 points Bezod | 6 comments | 08 Dec 25 16:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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superducktoes ◴[08 Dec 25 17:11 UTC] No.46194836[source]▶
Thanks for sharing my site. Happy to answer any questions
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metadat ◴[08 Dec 25 17:33 UTC] No.46195114[source]▶
Impressive sleuthing!

It's interesting to discover the reality that packet routing ends up following political affiliations. I didn't know North Korea only has 1,024 IPv4 addresses. Do you know why so few IPs? How did they get them?

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monerozcash ◴[08 Dec 25 17:37 UTC] No.46195178[source]▶
DPRK can certainly get however many IP addresses they want, DPRK just doesn't have that much infrastructure that they want externally accessible.

As far as I know, end-user traffic from within North Korea usually does not originate from those few IP addresses. Or at least not visibly so, they might be connecting to a proxy from a DPRK IP address.

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1. lukan ◴[08 Dec 25 21:18 UTC] No.46197769[source]▶
"DPRK can certainly get however many IP addresses they want"

IP4 is quite limited as far as I know and not given out freely since a long time, or what do you mean here?

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2. jauer ◴[08 Dec 25 21:47 UTC] No.46198095[source]▶
IPv4 continues to be available to entities that have a need that fits a particular policy shape, just most people don't. Specifically, you can get IPv4 /24s for IPv6 transition purposes. This includes anycast DNS, MX, etc for legacy clients on other networks, v4-side of CGNAT, etc.

E.g. I was able to get a /24 in the ARIN region in 2021 and could justify 2 more for a _logical_ network topology similar to what NK presents to the world.

APNIC similarly has a pool available for IPv4 allocations: https://www.apnic.net/manage-ip/ipv4-exhaustion/#the-situati...

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3. monerozcash ◴[08 Dec 25 21:52 UTC] No.46198159[source]▶
IPv4 is readily available and not very expensive. DPRK can just buy or lease them.
4. toast0 ◴[08 Dec 25 22:21 UTC] No.46198427[source]▶
APNIC has some addresses [1] and will assign up to two /24s to qualified new accounts within the region. There are also carve outs for National Internet Registries and Internet eXchange Points.

[1] as of Nov 2025, approximately 3 million or a little more than 12,000 /24s https://www.apnic.net/manage-ip/ipv4-exhaustion/#how-to-tras...

5. protocolture ◴[09 Dec 25 10:22 UTC] No.46203361[source]▶
Apnic used to hand out a /22 to most members. Its now a waiting list for 2 /24s. They would probably give some priority to a nation state over yet another mdu fibre isp.
6. eqvinox ◴[09 Dec 25 12:12 UTC] No.46204068[source]▶
IPv4 is a question of money in almost all cases at this point. You can get what you can pay for.