North Korea Suffers Major Internet Failure
BLITZER: Today, North Korea is reeling after a massive outage that knocked the country offline for nine hours yesterday and for a shorter time after a second blackout today. The disruption reportedly took out key Web sites used by the Kim Jong-Un regime, including one run by the Korean Central News Agency. One expert saying, it's as if North Korea got erased from the global map of the Internet, at least for several hours. And it all comes as North Korea and the United States are locked in an escalating war of words over the Sony hack. After that incident, the president of the United States said the U.S. would respond, though President Obama never said how or when. So, was this payback coincidence or maybe an inside job? Here's CNN's Kyung Lah.</s>KYUNG LAH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): North Korean television broadcast without a hitch leading the news Kim Jong-Un visiting a fish farm. But in cyberspace, the country went dark. State-run Web site KCNA blank or blooming with flowers. Web security expert, Matthew Prince, was watching what is calls the map of the Internet.</s>MATTHEW PRINCE, CEO AND FOUNDER, CLOUDFLARE (via Skype): The North Korean Internet had effectively been erased from that map.</s>LAH (on camera): When you say erased, what do you mean by erased?</s>PRINCE: The tube that connects them with the rest of the world has been cut.</s>LAH (voice-over): Cut by a hacker, by America? President Obama promised the U.S. would respond to the Sony hack.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will respond proportionally and we'll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.</s>LAH: Given the rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, DPRK watchers doubt the U.S. would bother or be so transparent. Could North Korea have cut the cord?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You want us to kill the leader of North Korea?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?</s>LAH: Fearing the movie "The Interview" would manage to sneak in, or preemptive move on a future cyber-attack. Regimes like Egypt and Syria have switched off the Internet before. Or could it simply be coincidence, system failure at a time when the world watches? Cyber experts say that's unlikely. An outage of hours upon hours, even for North Korea, a country known for not having electricity or food for its people, is unusual. As Matthew Prince and I weigh the possible culprits, a surprise on state-run Web site</s>KCNA. LAH (on camera): Oh, wait, wait, hold on. What?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: KCNA is back up.</s>LAH: We are actually, I'm hearing that KCNA - KCNA appears to be back up. (voice over): That, says the editor of a "Hacker" magazine, points to the most likely culprit, the rogue hacker, the on and off of North Korea's Web the hallmarks of a denial of service attack.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would say any 14-year-old kid in this country could probably pull it off and any toddler in Germany. It's not hard.</s>LAH (on camera): Some hackers online have said they're responsible, but the hacking and security community are extremely suspicious of anyone claiming credit. We'll likely never know who did this. Adding to the long list of things we already don't know about North Korea. Kyung Lah, CNN, Seoul.</s>BLITZER: More on the breaking news coming up. Also coming up, new evidence that the U.S. economy is shifting into high gear. We are going to tell you what's driving the market into new record territory and why more Americans are feeling optimistic right now.