North Koreans increasingly use VPN services to break through state censorship and avoid monitoring, adore Apple products and often stay up late to browse the web, according to new research exploring how the tech habits of DPRK citizens changed during the pandemic.

For a new report released this month, Recorded Future’s Insikt Group’s threat research division analyzed North Korean internet traffic during the period between Jan. 2023 and March 2024, when the DPRK experienced “little to no foreign presence” after closing its borders to prevent the spread of COVID-19.