WASHINGTON
North Korea's
Internet went dark for several hours amid rumours 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 country's already limited Internet went
completely offline overnight from Monday to Tuesday local time.
Piling
further pressure on Kim Jong-Un's regime, UN members debated North
Korea's brutal treatment of its huge prison population after China, its
sole ally, was rebuffed in a bid to shelve the issue.
US-based
Internet analysts Dyn Research said Pyongyang's four online networks,
all connected through Chinese telecom provider China Unicom, had been
offline for nine hours and 31 minutes before services resumed on Tuesday
morning.
Dyn Research said Pyongyang's very limited
infrastructure could be vulnerable to power outages but that the way it
had collapsed "seems consistent with a fragile network under external
attack."
US President Barack Obama and the FBI have
accused North Korea of being behind the hacking of Hollywood studio Sony
Pictures, which was intimidated into canceling a comedy film mocking
Kim.
Washington officials refused to comment on
speculation that the North Korean Internet blackout was the first stage
in what Obama has warned will be a "proportionate response" to the hack.
North
Korea has angrily insisted that it had nothing to do with the theft and
leaking of Sony company secrets nor threats against moviegoers, but it
has also condemned the madcap movie "The Interview."
US officials, however, called for compensation for Sony Pictures from North Korea.
"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," Earl
Zmijewski, vice president of data analytics at Dyn, told AFP.
'Absurd' call for hack probe
But
Zmijewski 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.
Pyongyang
has called for a joint investigation into the Sony hack, and vowed
reprisals if the US brings in new sanctions such as restoring the
country to a 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 favour of it.
US
ambassador Samantha Power — backed by envoys from Britain, Australia and
France — said North Korean citizens experience a "living nightmare" of
political repression.
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 as "absurd," urging the council to
take action against North Korean leaders.
No decision
was taken on Monday on a call to refer North Korea to the International
Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, but campaigners urged the
body to keep the issue alive.
North Korea has limited
access to the worldwide web with just four networks on the global
Internet, compared to 150,000 in the United States, analysts say.
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.
China's foreign ministry on Monday condemned "cyber terrorism" in any form but did not refer directly to North Korea.
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.
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