Several North Korean websites went offline for around four hours on Tuesday morning, an occurrence that one expert said may indicate a targeted attack against Pyongyang’s internet infrastructure.

The websites of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), official newspaper Rodong Sinmun newspaper and foreign ministry were all down shortly before 5 a.m. KST and remained inaccessible until around 9 a.m., according to NK Pro analysis. 

Cybersecurity researcher Junade Ali told NK Pro that the outage also impacted email traffic into North Korea for at least 204 minutes — over 3 hours.

Doug Madory, director of