North Korea has gone completely offline, just days after the U.S. formally accused the country of being behind the Sony cyber attacks.
North Korea started experiencing some trouble with their connection Sunday and went dark on Monday, Bloomberg News reported.
‘‘The situation now is they are totally offline,’’ Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, told Bloomberg. ‘‘I don’t know that someone is launching a cyber attack against North Korea, but this isn’t normal for them. Usually they are up solid. It is kind of out of the ordinary. This is not like anything I’ve seen before.”
North Korea has four official networks connecting the country to the Internet, all of which route through China. The U.S. has more than 152,000 such networks, according to Dyn Research.
The internet outage comes on the heels of President Obama’s promise of a “proportional response” to North Korea’s involvement in the Sony hack. North Korean officials denied involvement in the attacks, but U.S. officials said they stand behind their assessment.
The Sony hacks were seemingly prompted by the upcoming comedy film, “The Interview,” about an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, would not confirm or deny any cyber-attacks on North Korea, Bloomberg reported. She also would not say what steps the U.S. may take in response to the Sony attack.
“We are considering a range of options in response,” Harf said at a State Department briefing. “Some will be seen. Some may not be seen.”
