Researchers report that North Korea’s internet has gone dark today.
The New York Times reports the network failure or probable take down is one of the worst in years.
North Korea’s internet is managed by Star Joint Venture, a state-run company that routes much of its traffic through China Unicom, China’s state-owned telecommunications company.
According analysts, North Korea began experiencing problems on Friday after Obama pledged a response to the unsubstantiated claim the government of Kim Jong-un was responsible for a hack at Sony Pictures after the movie studio produced a film portraying the murder of Jong-un.
North Korea is suffering a complete internet outage http://t.co/SWzm7Diozo pic.twitter.com/UTSwq6PCCI
— Engadget (@engadget) December 22, 2014
“Their networks are under duress,” said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research. “This is consistent with a DDoS attack on their routers.”
“The situation now is they are totally offline," Madory told Bloomberg. "I don't know that someone is launching a cyber-attack against North Korea, but this isn't normal for them."
"I haven't seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in KP before. Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn't be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently."
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