Something is happening with the North Korean internet system. Right now, there is no way to say what that something is, but whatever it is, North Korea’s internet service is suffering one of its worst outages in recent memory. And even more stranger is the fact that this massive outage comes just days after President Obama promised a “proportional response” to the North’s confirmed attack on Sony Entertainment.
“I haven’t seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in KP before,” said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at the cybsecurity firm Dyn Research, according to Martyn Williams of the excellent blog North Korea Tech. Madory explained, “Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently.”
While it’s entirely possible that this is due to run-of-the-mill maintenance or technical issues, it’s hard to miss that the outage comes just days after President Obama condemned North Korea as responsible for the massive cyberattack against Sony and pledged a “proportional” US response. Two other cybersecurity firms confirmed to the New York Times that North Korea’s is collapsing amid an apparent cyber attack.
