Jakarta Globe – AFP, Dec 23, 2014
Washington. North Korea’s Internet has gone dark amid rumors of US retaliation over its alleged hacking of a Hollywood studio, just as the pariah state came under attack at the UN over its rights record.
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| Workers remove a poster-banner for "The Interview" from a billboard in Hollywood, California, December 18, 2014 a day after Sony announced was cancelling the movie's Christmas release due to a terrorist threat. Sony defended itself Thursday against a flood of criticism for canceling the movie which angered North Korea and triggered a massive cyber-attack, as the crisis took a wider diplomatic turn. (AFP Photo/ Robyn Beck) |
Washington. North Korea’s Internet has gone dark amid rumors of US retaliation over its alleged hacking of a Hollywood studio, just as the pariah state came under attack at the UN over its rights record.
It was not
clear who or what had shut down Pyongyang’s web connections, but cyber experts
said the eccentric dictatorship’s already limited connections had gone
completely offline.
And, in an
unconnected development that nevertheless piled further pressure on Kim
Jong-Un’s hermit regime, UN members debated North Korea’s brutal treatment of
his huge prison population.
”North
Korea is completely off the Internet,” Earl Zmijewski, vice president of data
analytics at respected cyber security firm Dyn Research, told AFP on Monday.
Pyongyang’s
disappearance from the web came after US President Barack Obama vowed to
retaliate for what the FBI said was North Korea’s cyber assault on Hollywood
studio Sony Pictures.
US
officials refused to confirm or deny that Washington was behind the North’s
Internet outage.
But they
called for compensation for Sony which — following threats against movie-goers
— pulled the Christmas Day debut of comedy “The Interview,” which lampoons
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
”If they
want to help here they could admit their culpability and compensate Sony for
the damages that they caused,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf
told reporters.
Dyn
Research said earlier Monday that Internet connectivity between North Korea and
the outside world, never good at the best of times, had begun to show signs of
instability over the weekend.
”This is
different from short duration outages we have seen in the past,” said Zmijewski
in an email to AFP.
But he
stressed it was impossible to say what had caused the outage. “They could have elected
to simply pull the plug or they could have suffered from some sort of failure
or attack,” he said.
”I wouldn’t
be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently,” Doug Madory,
the director of Internet analysis at Dyn, had earlier told the North Korea Tech
website.
North
Korea’s communist authorities have denied being behind the Sony hacking that
also led to the release of a slew of embarrassing company emails.
Instead,
Pyongyang has called for a joint investigation, and vowed reprisals if the US
brings in new sanctions, including putting the country back on the list of
state sponsors of terrorism.
The
diplomatic row comes as China failed on Monday to block the first-ever UN
Security Council meeting on North Korea’s dismal rights record after a strong
majority of members voted in favor of it.
US
ambassador Samantha Power — backed by envoys from Britain, Australia and France
— said North Korean citizens experience a “living nightmare” or political
repression.
And she
recalled testimony from a starving prison camp survivor who picked kernels of
corn from cattle dung to eat and of a former guard who said prison wardens
routinely raped prisoners.
Power
dismissed Pyongyang’s offer of a joint investigation into the hack was “absurd”
urging the council to take action against North Korean leaders.
No decision
was taken on Monday on the call to refer North Korea to the International
Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, but human rights advocates urged
the body to keep the issue alive.
North
Korea, one of the most repressive nations on the planet, has limited access to
the worldwide web, with just four networks on the global Internet, compared to
150,000 in the United States.
All of
North Korea’s routing is done through China Netcom, which is now part of China
Unicom, Zmijewski said.
Washington
has urged Beijing — Pyongyang’s closest ally — to help rein in the North’s
cyber hacking activities, with US Secretary of State John Kerry speaking with
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi over the weekend to discuss the problem.
”As North
Korea’s sole Internet provider, it would be easy for China Unicom to disable
North Korea’s access,” Zmijewski added.
”We have
checked from hosts inside of China Unicom’s network and can confirm that North
Korea is not visible from within China either.”
Pyongyang’s
main Internet presence is through its Uriminzokkiri website, which has Twitter
and Flickr feeds and is best known for posting propaganda videos excoriating
South Korea and the United States.
Agence France-Presse
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