Oriental Network reporter Bian Yinghao
"Disconnection, early rise, spoilers...", which was once ridiculed by netizens as the experience of the three major contemporary "torture", now really happens around some Korean netizens.
Today (October 25), local time, South Korea experienced a nationwide large-scale network outage, and various network services were suddenly interrupted for up to 1 hour. What happened to South Korea's network, which has one of the fastest internet speeds in the world, today? As a well-known "communication power", why is there still a large-scale network disconnect accident in South Korea?
South Korea disconnected from the Internet for 1 hour: the people are "confused", and China is also affected?
"I was getting ready to eat. When checking out, I found that the mobile phone payment could not be swiped, and the credit card could not be paid. I almost thought I had frozen my assets. ”
Mr. Wang, who has worked in Korea for many years, is going to his office in Seoul today as usual. Since then, he has personally experienced a rare large-scale disconnection. Mr. Wang told the Oriental Network reporter that the time of the disconnection was long, and the lives of ordinary local people have been greatly affected, "The shops are lined up, and even the public telephone booths are full of people." ”
"To be honest, I didn't know what was going on. There is no way to go online, there is no way to talk, the whole person is ignorant. As Mr. Wang said, due to the interruption of network services, the new media clients of the mainstream news media in South Korea, including Yonhap News Agency, JoongAng Ilbo, and the Korean Economy, could not be accessed, and even the official notice of the Internet service provider KT involved could not be released at the first time.
The impact of South Korea's disconnection has even spread to China, which is "thousands of miles away".
At 11:00 local time today (12:00 Beijing time), the 26th Samsung Cup World Go Masters Round of 8 came to an end. Chinese chess player Yang Dingxin Jiudan plans to play against South Korea's Lee Chang-seok Jiudan today. Affected by the epidemic, this year's competition was held on the Internet.
However, less than 10 minutes after the start of this world-renowned game, the Network on the South Korean side suddenly "went down". At that time, only 38 and 27 of the two innings were completed, respectively, and the two matches had to be postponed until tomorrow because the South Korean network "could not restore connectivity".
What's really happening to the Network in South Korea today?
According to Yonhap News Agency, at about 11 o'clock today, the network service of the Korean telecommunications company (KT Corporation) suddenly interrupted, and the relevant wired and wireless networks could not be connected. Securities trading systems that use KT network services, hotel settlement systems, and even services such as networks and mobile phone signals in ordinary residents' homes have been affected to varying degrees. The outage lasted about an hour, and as of press time, most of the network services have been restored.
What is the impact of KT disconnection on South Korea? According to data released by the Ministry of Science, Technology, Information and Communications of the Republic of Korea, as of the end of 2020, KT accounted for 47.8% of the Korean network market share, and was the largest network operator in South Korea. At the same time, in the field of mobile communications, KT's market share is also as high as 31.6%, ranking second.
Cyber attack or mispronounced? What happened to the Network in South Korea
For the large-scale network outage that occurred today, KT pointed out in a statement that the network outage was due to a large-scale "distributed denial of service" (DDos) attack on the KT network, which caused a large-scale paralysis of the company's network.
At the same time, the South Korean police also announced that they had opened an investigation into whether the disconnection involved a "large-scale hacker attack".
What is a DDos attack? Desi, a "white hat" with ten years of experience in the network security industry, told the Oriental Network reporter that the principle of "distributed denial of service" is to use the "broiler chicken" (note: remote computer controlled by hackers) to send a large number of requests to the relevant website in a relatively short period of time, and consume the host resources of the target website on a large scale through such a method, so that it cannot provide services normally.
According to Desi, DDos attacks are the usual means of hackers today. In recent years, large Internet companies, including Microsoft, Google, etc., have repeatedly encountered large-scale DDos attacks.
Previously, Microsoft had disclosed details of the "largest DDoS attack ever" it had suffered. The data shows that the attack lasted for 10 minutes and the peak traffic reached 2.4Tbps. Desi explained that this is equivalent to Microsoft's servers receiving uninterrupted access requests from "broiler chickens" from 70,000 sources in 10 minutes. But in the end, Microsoft fended off the attack and set a world record for defending against the largest DDoS attack.
"If it's really a cyberattack, then depending on the level of network communication in South Korea, they may have suffered a DDOS attack on a larger scale than Microsoft." Desi told the Oriental Network reporter.
However, just before the press release. KT released another statement saying that through further investigation, they believed that the accident was caused by an incorrect network path setting. The specific reasons still need to be further identified with the Government.
Whether South Korea's large-scale network disconnection was a cyber attack or a "technical error" is still unknown. But it is certain that this is not the first time that south Korea has been disconnected from the Internet.
In November 2018, the same KT company, the company's A Da Nang branch of the company burst into flames, resulting in the local network all being paralyzed. The local police, hospitals and other social infrastructure in Adan were forced to shut down. Due to the disconnection of the whole city, there has even been a tragedy in which the elderly have failed to make emergency calls and unfortunately died at home.