Seoul: North Korea has suffered an internet shutdown for at least two hours, Chinese state media and cyber experts say, after Pyongyang blamed Washington for an online blackout earlier this week.
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Xinhua news agency reported that North Korea's internet and mobile 3G network came to a standstill at 7.30am local time on Saturday (9.30am Australian eastern time) in Pyongyang and had not returned to normal as of 9.30pm.
Xinhua's reporters in North Korea found that the internet was "very unstable" throughout the day, the report added.
North Korea earlier in the day called US President Barack Obama a "monkey" for inciting cinemas to screen a comedy featuring a fictional plot to kill its leader, and blamed Washington for an internet blackout this week.
The isolated dictatorship's powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) threatened "inescapable deadly blows" over the film and accused the US of "disturbing the internet operation" of North Korean media outlets.
"The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses would, has begun disrupting the internet operations of the main media outlets of our republic," said the statement. In the past few days, the websites of the state-run news agency and the newspaper Rodong Sinmun, two of the North's main outlets to the world, were among those that went dead for several hours.
"Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," the statement said.
The earlier internet outage triggered speculation that US authorities may have launched a cyber-attack in retaliation for the hacking of Sony Pictures - the studio behind The Interview, a comedy set in North Korea.
Washington has said the attack on Sony Pictures was carried out by Pyongyang, but some experts have suggested Russian hackers may be responsible.
Meanwhile, Sony Pictures' Japanese parent company Sony Corp has been working for a third day to restore services to its PlayStation network as the FBI said it was looking into the disruption, which began on Christmas Day.
"We are aware of the reports and are investigating the Sony PlayStation matter," FBI spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said via email. She did not elaborate.
"If you received a PlayStation console over the holidays and have been unable to log onto the network, know that this problem is temporary and is not caused by your game console," Sony executive Catherine Jensen said on the company's US PlayStation blog.
Sony declined to say how many of the network's 56 million users had been affected by the attack.
A hacker activist group known as Lizard Squad said it was responsible for the network outage as well as delays on Microsoft's Xbox network; Microsoft quickly fixed the problem.
The group has claimed responsibility for previous attacks, including ones on PlayStation in early December and August.
The August attack coincided with a bomb scare in which Lizard Squad tweeted to American Airlines that it heard explosives were on board a Dallas to San Diego flight carrying an executive with Sony Online Entertainment.
Sony has been the victim of some of the most notorious cyberattacks in history. Besides the breach at its Hollywood studio, hackers stole data belonging to 77 million PlayStation Network users in 2011.
New York Times, AFP, Reuters
http://www.theage.com.au/
Xinhua news agency reported that North Korea's internet and mobile 3G network came to a standstill at 7.30am local time on Saturday (9.30am Australian eastern time) in Pyongyang and had not returned to normal as of 9.30pm.
Xinhua's reporters in North Korea found that the internet was "very unstable" throughout the day, the report added.
North Korea earlier in the day called US President Barack Obama a "monkey" for inciting cinemas to screen a comedy featuring a fictional plot to kill its leader, and blamed Washington for an internet blackout this week.
The isolated dictatorship's powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) threatened "inescapable deadly blows" over the film and accused the US of "disturbing the internet operation" of North Korean media outlets.
"The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses would, has begun disrupting the internet operations of the main media outlets of our republic," said the statement. In the past few days, the websites of the state-run news agency and the newspaper Rodong Sinmun, two of the North's main outlets to the world, were among those that went dead for several hours.
"Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," the statement said.
The earlier internet outage triggered speculation that US authorities may have launched a cyber-attack in retaliation for the hacking of Sony Pictures - the studio behind The Interview, a comedy set in North Korea.
Washington has said the attack on Sony Pictures was carried out by Pyongyang, but some experts have suggested Russian hackers may be responsible.
Meanwhile, Sony Pictures' Japanese parent company Sony Corp has been working for a third day to restore services to its PlayStation network as the FBI said it was looking into the disruption, which began on Christmas Day.
"We are aware of the reports and are investigating the Sony PlayStation matter," FBI spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said via email. She did not elaborate.
"If you received a PlayStation console over the holidays and have been unable to log onto the network, know that this problem is temporary and is not caused by your game console," Sony executive Catherine Jensen said on the company's US PlayStation blog.
Sony declined to say how many of the network's 56 million users had been affected by the attack.
A hacker activist group known as Lizard Squad said it was responsible for the network outage as well as delays on Microsoft's Xbox network; Microsoft quickly fixed the problem.
The group has claimed responsibility for previous attacks, including ones on PlayStation in early December and August.
The August attack coincided with a bomb scare in which Lizard Squad tweeted to American Airlines that it heard explosives were on board a Dallas to San Diego flight carrying an executive with Sony Online Entertainment.
Sony has been the victim of some of the most notorious cyberattacks in history. Besides the breach at its Hollywood studio, hackers stole data belonging to 77 million PlayStation Network users in 2011.
New York Times, AFP, Reuters
http://www.theage.com.au/
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