North Korea goes completely offline
North Korea goes completely offline: Report
Everett Rosenfeld |
@Ev_Rosenfeld
2 Hours Ago CNBC.com
North Korea is having major Internet problems, just days
after President Barack Obama promised a proportional response to the
devastating hacks against Sony.
The country, which the FBI accused last week of the
cyberattack, is suffering a total Internet outage that experts at DYN Research
said is out of the ordinary, as first reported by North Korea Tech. According
to the research firm, North Korea's Internet connectivity grew steadily worse
beginning Sunday night, and then went completely offline Monday morning.
"I haven't seen such a steady beat of routing
instability and outages in KP before," Doug Madory, director of Internet
analysis at DYN Research, told North Korea Tech. "Usually there are
isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn't be surprised
if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently."
In an interview with Re/code, Madory said that even
typically strong connections are experiencing disruptions. (CNBC's parent NBC
Universal is an investor in Re/code's parent Revere Digital.)
"They're pretty stable networks normally," he
told Re/code. "In the last 24 hours or so, the networks in North Korea are
under some kind of duress, but I can't tell you exactly what's causing
it."
He added that there is no way to know if the outages are
the result of an attack, or are just from maintenance or a power outage. Still,
"given the timing," a cyberattack is worth considering, he told
Re/code.
In a Friday media conference, Obama promised a response
"at a place and time and manner that we choose," and he declined to
rule out military force or economic penalties.
When asked for comment, a White House National Security
Council representative told CNBC, "We don't have any new announcements on
North Korea today."
"We aren't going to discuss publicly operational
details about the possible response options or comment on those kind of reports
in anyway except to say that as we implement our responses, some will be seen,
some may not be seen," Marie Harf, a deputy spokeswoman at the State
Department, said during a media briefing.
Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Cloudflare CEO
Matthew Prince suggested that North Korea's loss of Internet connectivity may
not necessarily be the result of U.S. action. In fact, he told the Journal, the
country could have shut off its own Internet to assert control over its
population or guard against cyberattacks. China—which provides Internet to the
embattled nation—also could have taken North Korea offline in response to
American pressure, he said.
Regardless of the reason behind the outage, some said it
could present an opportunity:
—CNBC's Eamon Javers contributed to this report.
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