Communication security
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North Korean websites back online after shutdown
SEOUL,
South Korea (AP) — Key North Korean websites were back online Tuesday after an
hours-long shutdown that followed a U.S. vow to respond to a cyberattack on
Sony Pictures that Washington blames on Pyongyang. The White House and the
State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible
for the shutdown in one of the least-wired countries in the world.
Internet
access to the North's official Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun
newspaper were working normally Tuesday after being earlier inaccessible, South
Korean officials said. Those sites are the main channels for official North
Korea news, with servers located abroad.
U.S.
computer experts earlier said North Korea experienced sweeping and
progressively worse Internet outages. One said the country's online access was
"totally down."
President
Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. government expected to respond to the Sony
hack, which he described as an expensive act of "cyber vandalism"
that he blamed on North Korea. Obama did not say how the U.S. might respond,
and it was not immediately clear if the Internet connectivity problems
represented the retribution. The U.S. government regards its offensive cyber operations
as highly classified.
North
Korea has denied it was responsible for hacking into Sony. But the country has
also called the attack a "righteous deed" and for months condemned
the "The Interview." Sony canceled plans to release the movie after a
group of hackers made terroristic threats against theaters that planned to show
it.
North
Korea has promoted the development of science and technology as a means of
improving its moribund economy. But access to the global Internet is severely
restricted. Mobile phones used on the state-authorized network cannot make
overseas calls. The North's Intranet gives access to government-sanctioned
sites and works with its own browsers, search engine and email programs,
according to South Korea's Unification Ministry
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