North Korea launches its own Facebook

North Korea launches Facebook clone. PHOTO: Telegraph

North Korea has frequently been on the news in the past few months; for worrying reasons. This time, however, the country is in the news for launching its own version of ‘Facebook’.

The website is called “Best Korea’s Social Network” and the homepage has a thin blue banner at the top with a search field for “people, #hashtags, !groups.”

Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Dyn, discovered the site on Friday.

He suspects that someone in North Korea made it as an experiment, but finds the whole thing puzzling for many reasons.

“It’s very unusual to have websites hosted in North Korea,” Madory toldCNNMoney.

“[I’m] not sure this was an official North Korean government project. But someone inside the country had to have done this.”

However, within a few hours of its launch the site’s was hacked by a Scottish teenager. Andrew McKean, an 18-year-old college student from Scotland, said he had guessed the security credentials for the website after learning that the default ones for phpDolphin – the particular Facebook clone used – were the predictable “admin” and “password”.

North Korea’s internet laws are extremely strict. Majority of citizens are banned from using the internet and the handful allowed are monitored closely, according to Martyn Williams, a senior correspondent at IDGnews service.