|
 U.S.-based Dyn, a company that monitors Internet infrastructure,
said the reason for the outage was not known but could range from
technological glitches to a hacking attack. Several U.S. officials
close to the investigations of the attack on Sony Pictures said the
U.S. government had not taken any cyber action against Pyongyang.
U.S. President Barack Obama had vowed on Friday to respond to the
major cyberattack, which he blamed on North Korea, "in a place and
time and manner that we choose."
Dyn said North Korea's Internet links were unstable on Monday and
the country later went completely offline. Links were restored at
0146 GMT on Tuesday, and the possibilities for the outage could be
attacks by individuals, a hardware failure, or even that it was done
by North Korea itself, experts said.
Matthew Prince, CEO of U.S.-based CloudFlare which protects websites
from web-based attacks, said the fact that North Korea's Internet
was back up "is pretty good evidence that the outage wasn't caused
by a state-sponsored attack, otherwise it'd likely still be down for
the count".
Almost all of North Korea's Internet links and traffic pass through
China and it dismissed any suggestion that it was involved as
"irresponsible".
Meanwhile, South Korea, which remains technically at war with the
North, said it could not rule out the involvement of its isolated
neighbor in a cyberattack on its nuclear power plant operator. It
said only non-critical data was stolen and operations were not at
risk, but had asked for U.S. help in investigating.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Tuesday the leak of
data from the nuclear operator was a "grave situation" that was
unacceptable as a matter of national security, but she did not
mention any involvement of North Korea.
North Korea is one of the least-connected nations in the world, and
the effects of the Internet outage would have been minimal.
Very few of its 24 million people have access to the Internet.
However, major websites, including those of the KCNA state news
agency, the main Rodong Sinmun newspaper and the main external
public relations company went down for hours.
"North Korea has significantly less Internet to lose, compared to
other countries with similar populations: Yemen (47 networks),
Afghanistan (370 networks), or Taiwan (5,030 networks)," Dyn
Research said in a report.
"And unlike these countries, North Korea maintains dependence on a
single international provider, China Unicom."
[to top of second column] |
NO PROOF, CHINA SAYS
The United States requested China's help last Thursday, asking it to
shut down servers and routers used by North Korea that run through
Chinese networks, senior administration officials told Reuters.
The United States also asked China to identify any North Korean
hackers operating in China and, if found, send them back to North
Korea. It wants China to send a strong message to Pyongyang that
such acts will not be tolerated, the officials said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday it opposed all forms of
cyberattacks but there was no proof that North Korea was responsible
for the Sony hacking.
North Korea has denied it was behind the cyberattack on Sony and has
vowed to hit back against any U.S. retaliation, threatening the
White House and the Pentagon..
The hackers said they were incensed by a Sony comedy about a
fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which
the movie studio has now pulled from general release.
China is North Korea's only major ally and would be central to any
U.S. efforts to crack down on the isolated state. But the United
States has also accused China of cyber spying in the past and a U.S.
official has said the attack on Sony could have used Chinese servers
to mask its origin.
(Additional reporting by Meeyoung Cho and Sohee Kim in Seoul; David
Brunnstrom and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Ben Blanchard and Megha
Rajagopalan in Beijing; Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore; Editing by
Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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