North Korea goes dark as it suffers massive network failure

NORTH KOREA – North Korea went dark on Monday, after suffering intermittent connectivity issues throughout the day Sunday. The blackout was a surprise to some, however, it would appear as though the blackout was not caused by a fiber-optic cable being cut. Instead, it would appear as though the blackout came as result of some other form of working. Last week, the United States government, and President Barack Obama vowed to retaliate, but that the retaliation would not constitute an act of war.

That being said, the director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research in New Hampshire pointed out that this was not normal, even for North Korea. “The situation now is they are totally offline,” he said regarding what was likely a secondary and responsive cyber-attack on North Korea for their alleged role in the Sony hack that cost Sony Entertainment millions, and forced the production company to cancel the movie “The Interview” which starred Seth Rogan and James Franco – in a plot that involved assassinating the leader of North Korea.

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The attack is something that most Koreans won’t actually have to deal with, since very few people amongst the general population actually have internet connection. North Korea is actually notorious for doing very little over the internet, and really only using the internet to maintain state sponsored content – like news agencies. At the moment though it’s unclear how long this outage could last, or what it could mean on the global scale.

While North Korea has claimed that they do not know the identity of the hackers, and did not perpetrate the hack itself, it would appears as though some retaliation has been executed either by the United States, or on behalf of the United States. North Korean leaders vowed that any retaliation would lead to additional retaliation “thousands of times greater,” and that North Korean retaliation would also be felt in the U.S. if leaders and government officials continued blaming North Korea for the Sony hack.

The group behind the attack has called themselves “Guardians of Peace,” but not everyone is convinced that the North Koreans were actually responsible for the attack. Some have contended that too much internal knowledge would have been necessary to commit a hack of this magnitude, and that the attack likely came from the inside. However, the United States has declined to comment on their involvement in North Korea’s blackout today.

Many have argued that Chinese involvement was likely, even if the North Koreans did actually cause the attack on Sony. North Korea’s internet is routed through China and many have called that China would be a more likely perpetrator of this type of action. The notion of North Korea being framed though, for this international cybercrime does seem like a stretch of the imagination for many, since North Korea had previously called this movie an “act of war” and “terrorism.” North Korea though is known for being incredibly closed off, so much of the information to this point is a lot of speculation.

About the author

Nitin Agarwal

Nitin has a background in Electrical Engineering and is passionate about the Internet of Things. He covers how connected devices like smart homes, wearables, and industrial IoT are changing our daily lives. Nitin is also a DIY enthusiast and loves to build IoT gadgets.