N.Korea's Internet collapses after Sony hack
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - North Korea's Internet has gone dark amid rumors 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 eccentric dictatorship's already limited connections had gone completely offline.
And, in an unconnected development that nevertheless piled further pressure on Kim Jong-Un's hermit regime, UN members debated North Korea's brutal treatment of his huge prison population.
"North Korea is completely off the Internet," Earl Zmijewski, vice president of data analytics at respected cyber security firm Dyn Research, told AFP on Monday.
Pyongyang's disappearance from the web came after US President Barack Obama vowed to retaliate for what the FBI said was North Korea's cyber assault on Hollywood studio Sony Pictures.
US officials refused to confirm or deny that Washington was behind the North's Internet outage.
But they called for compensation for Sony which -- following threats against movie-goers -- pulled the Christmas Day debut of comedy "The Interview," which lampoons North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
"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.
