North Korea's Internet Crashes 'Hard'

The reclusive country's state-run Internet has been down "hard" for more than three hours, according to Dyn Research yesterday, December 22nd 2014 which monitors the state of the Internet around the globe.

"I haven't seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in [North Korea] before," Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research told the website NorthKoreaTech.org. "Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn't be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently."

"Internet connectivity between North Korea and the outside world is currently suffering one of its worst outages in recent memory, suggesting that the country may be enduring a mass cyber attack a few days after President Obama warned the US would launch a "proportional response" to North Korea's hack against Sony

North Korea, which has four official networks connecting the country to the Internet -- all of which route through China -- began experiencing intermittent problems yesterday and today went completely black, according to Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research in Hanover, New Hampshire." Bloomberg reports.

Last week, a Twitter handle claiming to represent the hacking group Anonymous tweeted: Operation RIP North Korea, engaged. #OpRIPNK

Marie Harf, deputy spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, declined to comment today to journalists about the report that North Korea may have lost Internet access.

“We aren't going to discuss publicly operational details about the possible response options or comment on those kind of reports in any way except to say that as we implement our responses, some will be seen, some may not be seen,” Harf said. “So I can’t confirm those reports, but in general, that’s what the president has spoken to.”