DPRK experiences widespread Internet outages

World Today

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea experienced sweeping and progressively worse Internet outages extending into Monday, with one computer expert saying the country’s online access is “totally down.” The White House and the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible.

President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. government expected to respond to the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., which he described as an expensive act of “cyber vandalism” that he blamed the DPRK. Obama did not say how the U.S. might respond, and it was not immediately clear if the Internet connectivity problems represented the retribution. The U.S. government regards its offensive cyber operations as highly classified.

“We aren’t going to discuss, you know, 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,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

The DPRK has forcefully denied it was responsible for hacking into Sony. But the country has for months condemned the “The Interview,” a Sony satirical comedy about a plot to assassinate the North Korean leader. Sony canceled plans to release the movie after a group of hackers made terroristic threats against theaters that planned to show it.

DPRK diplomat Kim Song, asked Monday about the Internet attack, told The Associated Press: “I have no information.”

Doug Madory, the director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, an Internet performance company, said Monday the problems began over the weekend and grew progressively worse to the point that “North Korea’s totally down.”

Story compiled from AP reports.


Allan Friedman of George Washington Univ. discusses Sony hacking case

CCTV America interviewed Allan Friedman, a research scientist at the Cyber Security Policy Research Institute at George Washington University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences about the DPRK outage and the impact of the Sony hacking case.