After launching a cyber attack against Sony—releasing embarrassing emails, employee information, and threatening 9/11 style attacks on theaters that dared show “The Interview,” the country is now reportedly experiencing major Internet problems.
CNBC has the details:
The country, which the FBI accused last week of the cyberattack, is suffering from periodic Internet outages, and experts at DYN Research found that recent problems were out of the ordinary, according to a report from North Korea Tech.
"I haven't seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in KP before," Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, told North Korea Tech. "Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn't be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently."
In an interview with Re/code, Madory said that even typically strong connections are experiencing disruptions. (CNBC's parent NBC Universal is an investor in Re/code's parent Revere Digital.)
"They're pretty stable networks normally," he told Re/code. "In the last 24 hours or so, the networks in North Korea are under some kind of duress, but I can't tell you exactly what's causing it."
While we don’t yet know whether this was in fact some sort of counterattack, keep in mind that in a press conference just last week, President Obama said the cyber attack caused “a lot of damage” and promised to “respond proportionally,” in a “place and time and manner that we choose.”
Update:
According to Madory, the connectivity problem in the country has gotten so bad that it's now "totally down." Meanwhile, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf would not comment on the reported outages in North Korea but, regarding Obama's promise to respond, said "some will be seen, some may not be seen."