North Korean Internet Access Restored After Hours-Long Outage

 

North Korea’s limited access to the Internet was restored after being cut off for hours, days after the U.S. government accused the country of hacking into Sony Corp.’s files.
The connection, which can be patchy, was restored after a nearly 10-hour outage, Dyn Research said on Twitter today. Two state-run news websites were working as of 11:30 a.m. local time, including that of the Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun, which showed leader Kim Jong Un touring a catfish farm.
North Korea, which has four official networks connecting the country to the Internet -- all of which route through China -- began experiencing intermittent problems yesterday and today went completely dark, according to Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research in Hanover, New Hampshire.
“I don’t know that someone is launching a cyber-attack against North Korea, but this isn’t normal for them,” Madory said. “It is kind of out of the ordinary. This is not like anything I’ve seen before.”
U.S. President Barack Obama said last week that Sony Pictures Entertainment had suffered significant damage and vowed to respond. North Korea warned yesterday that any U.S. punishment over the hacking attack on would lead to a retaliation “thousands of times greater.” North Korea has said it doesn’t know the identity of the hackers -- who call themselves “Guardians of Peace” -- claiming responsibility for breaking into Sony’s computer network. 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-22/north-korea-undergoing-internet-outage-network-researcher-says.html