North Korean websites back online after shutdown

Key North Korean websites were back online Tuesday after an hours-long shutdown that followed a US 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 US 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. 

US computer experts earlier said North Korea experienced sweeping and progressively worse Internet outages. One said the country’s online access was “totally down.” Obama said Friday the US 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 US might respond, and it was not immediately clear if the Internet connectivity problems represented the retribution. The US government regards its offensive cyber operations as highly classified.