When North Korea’s internet went dark last Monday it was widely assumed and almost-but-not-quite confirmed that Obama administration cyber-seals were behind it. Very cool. And now it’s down again, according to China’s Xinhua news agency, only this time North Korea’s 3G mobile networks are also toast. Bitches talkin’ shit? Gettin’ slapped for it.
Saturday’s blackout was presumably a response to a statement from Pyongyang’s Policy Department of the National Defense Commission, issued yesterday, that said (a) the release of The Interview would “[hurt] the dignity of the supreme leadership” of North Korea while “agitating terrorism,” and that (b) President Obama, “reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” was the “chief culprit” behind Sony’s release of the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg film along with “wicked conservative forces.”
The note, full of the usual belligerence and saber-rattling, concludes by saying “if the U.S. persists in American-style arrogant, high-handed and gangster-like arbitrary practices despite the repeated warnings of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), the U.S. should bear in mind that its failed political affairs will face inescapable deadly blows.”
From MSNBC: “Analysts at Dyn Research, an international internet performance firm who are monitoring the country’s web access, spotted the outage late Saturday evening, North Korean time. The blackout comes days after the secretive authoritarian nation experienced a previous country-wide outage from what security experts think was a likely cyber-attack.”
When asked about last Monday’s zapping, U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters she would not publicly discuss any details about a “possible response” before adding, “as we implement our responses, some will be seen, some may not be seen.”