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Don’t look here for tasty insights on the state of North Korea’s online access or broadband penetration. Last thing I read on the topic was that only a few government spooks have full web access inside that secretive nation. But via Vox, a report has appeared today at a website that does claim such expertise and it states something looks to be afoot:

NoKoTech — I haven’t seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in KP before,” said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research. “Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently.”

That certainly sounds like a proportional response. Or an attempt at one. Apparently, NoKo does have some Internet including official webpages and the like as part of their pitiful PR campaign, word is their access routes in and out through China.  Although how “crippling” even a total nationwide denial of service could be in such a backward country is hard to gauge. North Korean webpages are about as convincing to the outside world as a Potemkin Village.

I certainly want it to be true, because those assholes deserve it, richly, with piping hot dressing and a cherry on top all day long. But this report could also be complete bunk or it could just be a minor, unorganized event thrown together by friendly hackers fooling around with too much time on their hands and a sense of payback. I’ll update the post if we get more details from wherever or any kind of official information.

Update: NYT also reporting likely attack; Yahoo News; Vox has an update on how the Internet works in NoKo and its fascinating; Twitter hashtag #NorthKorea

Update 12/23: It came back up breifly over the wee hours and is now down again. My guess would be this is more like an Anonymous hack, or a group sympathetic to them. But unless State dept or the WH confirms it was gov’t orchestrated, we will never know for sure.