North Korea’s Internet Has Crashed

North Korea’s internet crashed on Monday under rather suspicious circumstances after several days of instability. North Korea’s internet began to experience problems on Friday, and then crashed and went completely dark on Monday.

The New York Times reports that Dave Madory, a Dyn Research internet analysis director, noted that North Korean internet access began to experience problems on Friday. The issues progressively became worse, and by Monday, North Korea’s network was completely down. “Their networks are under duress,” Mr. Madory said in his comments. “This is consistent with a DDoS attack on their routers.” A Denial of Service attack pounds a network and its servers with data until it fails.

The New York Times also reported that San Francisco-based CloudFlare said Monday that North Korea’s internet access was “toast,” and problems with traffic attempting to reach North Korea were consistent in “showing that the North Korean network has gone away.”

The failure of North Korea’s network comes just days after President Obama said that the hacking of Sony by North Korea was not an act or war, but rather was “cyber-vandalism.” The President promised a proportional, measured response. There was discussion of placing additional trade restrictions on North Korea or placing them back on the state sponsors of terror list. Being on the terror list limits a country’s ability to secure international financing and credit and places it in the company of countries like Iran, Sudan and Syria.

The U.S. had also asked China for help in taking measures to prevent future attacks. The request came on the heels of the hacking of Sony computers which resulted in Sony cancelling the release of The Interview, a comedy in which two reporters are recruited by the CIA to assassinate the North Korean leader.

The taking down of North Korea’s network seems to have happened relatively quickly, and it is uncertain if the U.S. government might have taken more time before deciding on a course of action in mounting a response. The Inquisitr reported on December 19 that the hacker collective Anonymous announced that they would be taking action in response to the Sony hack. The article closed by suggesting that North Korea might find itself experience computer problems in the coming days.

The network serving the North is not nearly as extensive as most developed countries and is available only to high government official and the elite. The majority of mainstream North Koreans won’t be directly affected by the network crash since few have internet access.

Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is certain to notice, however.