Amidst a war of words between the United States and North Korea over the hacking of Sony Pictures, it seems that North Korea has fallen victim to a hack of its own with the entire Internet going down for the country.
North Korea's Internet has since limped back online, but according to Dyn Research North Korea's Internet had gone "down hard" for several hours. Two state-run newspapers are back online, but it still seems that North Korea is having trouble consistently staying online. Under the country's communist regime, the population has limited access to the Internet that mostly consists of state-run news outlets disseminating party ideology.
North Korea has only four networks connecting the country's Intranet to the global community, all routed through China leaving the small communist country vulnerable to attack.
In recent days, the US and North Korea have been embroiled in a war of words since the US announced that the country was responsible for the Sony attacks. The hackers released films, confidential emails and financial data of the studio in an attempt to block the release of the movie, "The Interview."
The FBI has formally accused the country of the hack and President Obama has promised an appropriate response, but it isn't clear if the North Korean Internet problems were caused by the US. Thus far, neither country has commented officially on the Internet outage.
"As a result of our investigation, and in close collaboration with other US Government departments and agencies, the FBI now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions," the FBI said Friday in a statement.
"We cannot have a society in which some dictators some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States," US President Barack Obama says. "If somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing once they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like."
North Korea, for its part, has denied involvement in the hack of Sony Pictures backing this denial with claims of further attacks if the US continues with its accusations against the country.
South Korea, one of the allies of the United States, has beefed up its cyber security in the wake of hackers targeting 23 of its nuclear power plants.
While nothing has been released about the source of North Korea's Internet outage, the communist country rarely remains silent on issues such as this and will likely increase its rhetoric over the days to come.
