If you play with fire, expect to get burned. That’s a lesson that North Korea has learned the hard way after suddenly finding itself wiped off the face of the Internet, following an outage that appears to be the result of a retaliatory attack from the US, Sony and their allies.

It’s just the latest chapter in the fascinating tale of Sony and North Korea’s ongoing cyberwar, which began when the Japanese film maker was hacked in late November. Suspicion immediately fell on the North Koreans, who were apparently angered by the Sony-produced film, “The Interview”, which depicts an assassination attempt against their leader, Kim Jong-Un. North Korea has denied being involved in the cyberattack, although it praised the attackers for carrying out a “righteous deed”.

But it wasn’t just Sony that fell victim; dozens of its employees were affected when personal information like social security numbers were published online. This was followed by warnings against Sony’s employees and their families, as well as threats against cinemas that dared to screen the movie – causing several major US theater companies to announce they would no longer show it. Without the support of big name cinemas like Cinemark and Regal Entertainment, Sony decided to cancel release of the movie in theatrrs.

The incident has since taken on a political dimension, with the FBI “confirming” North Korea’s responsibility and condemning the hack, stating, “Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior,” while U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was considering putting North Korea back on its list of terrorism sponsors.

The White House also hinted it was planning a response. “They would be mindful of the fact that we need a proportional response, and also mindful of the fact that sophisticated actors, when they carry out actions like this, are oftentimes — not always, but often — seeking to provoke a response from the United States of America,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. “They may believe that a response from us in one fashion or another would be advantageous to them. So we want to be mindful of that.”

Could it be that North Korea has now witnessed that “proportional response?” The country was sent back into the IT equivalent of the Dark Ages yesterday, when it fell victim to a widespread Internet outage. North Korea is connected to the web by four main cables, all of which route through China, and all four went offline yesterday afternoon.

Web monitoring firm Dyn Research said North Korea’s outage was unprecedented. “I haven’t seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in [the Korean peninsula] before,” explained Doug Madory, Dyn Research’s director of Internet analysis. “Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently.”

US officials have refused to confirm their involvement in North Korea’s outage, but they didn’t absolutely deny it, either. “We aren’t going to discuss publicly operational details about the possible response options or comment on those kind of reports in anyway except to say that as we implement our responses, some will be seen, some may not be seen,” said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.

Whoever was behind the outage, it was apparently successful enough that North Korea threatened attacks on the White House and “the whole US mainland”.

“The army and people of the DPRK [North Korea] are fully ready to stand in confrontation with the US in all war spaces including cyber warfare space,” said a long statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

photo credit: Lee Bennett via photopin cc