A hacker who famously 'brought down North Korea's internet for over a week' has invited the internet to 'ask him anything' about it.
If you missed the story, hacker Alejandro Caceres, who goes by the name of P4x, brought down the servers hosting North Korea’s websites and email services offline with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Unlike most hackers who work with a team, Caceres operated alone from his coastal Florida home in January 2022 - convincing the U.S. government that what he was doing was right.
Caceres had been personally targeted by North Korean spies in the past, who attempted to steal his intrusion tools, leading him to seek revenge.
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'It felt like the right thing to do here,' he told WIRED at the time. 'If they don’t see we have teeth, it’s just going to keep coming.'
Now, two months after this impressive act, Caceres has opened up in a lengthy Reddit thread, offering to answer any questions about it.
'Recently I was on NPR’s The World and a bunch of other sh**,' he wrote on the forum.
'Anyway, AMA about the hack, personal stuff, whatever! Happy to answer. I have not yet been murdered or arrested, so that’s pretty good.'
Of course, the first question is whether it was 'hard' to take down North Korea's network.
He replied: 'Honestly I’ve been asked this a lot. And I can’t really tell haha. I used to say nah it wasn’t that hard.
'But then I told people how I did it and they were like "well ok, it wasn’t hard but only because you’re trained in this…."'
Another Reddit user asked the hacker what he feels are the most likely consequences of his actions.
'so far the only “consequences” is every DoD entity and intelligence agencies want to know how I did it. I’ve been presenting it to them for a little bit now,' he responded.
'Nothing negative yet honestly. Everyone seems to sort of like it but cannot say that officially. Honestly, I expected a LOT more negativity just because that’s the natural order of things.'
Journalists have also had their turn in asking Caceres questions, NK News questioned: 'How much awareness did you have about North Korea’s internet infrastructure and cyber operations before they started targeting you?'
Caceres said: 'Not that much. There are people that know a lot, people that are experts in this. I was definitely not an expert.
'Of course, I was an expert in computers and hacking at that point. But in terms of North Korea in particular, I knew a little bit more than the basics.'
Kindly, another Reddit user advised Caceres to 'avoid airports in SE asia' for the sake of his safety.