[jgwest]

Maybe it's the doing of the U.S. gov't... maybe not...

But in any case, what's the point of keeping the U.S. government's action or non-action secret?

As the linked piece states:

"If the attack was American in origin — something the United States would probably never acknowledge ..."

It's sort of like the Doomsday Machine in Dr. Strangelove: it just doesn't work as a deterrent if you keep it a secret.

Or is all this secret "cyberwarfare" capability that the U.S. government is secretly building only going to be used in secret?

[vegabook]

Your excellent point has a follow on: who exactly is responsible for deciding when or if such a retaliation is to occur? Is there any oversight? Is there any accountability? Who are the individuals involved? Which agency is involved? Is Obama fessing up or not? I am not saying that I agree or disagree with the retaliation, only that open accountability is necessary, precisely such that our collective liberty is safeguarded.

If this is not the US, then the cybersecurity apparatus of the US and other nations must surely provide more information about which entity has the power to take down an entire country's internet (even if, admittely, this is a small country that is easy to take down?). We need to know either that this is an explicit retaliatory attack (in which case, who is deciding the legitimacy and proportion of this retaliation), or if not, we need to know very clearly that our cybersecurity apparatus is aware of who did it, and if not, what are they doing to become aware of such issues in the future (with guarantees of public disclosure when this is not incompatible with national security).

Basically, we cannot have a situation where signficant swathes of the internet can be taken down with nobody knowing what's going on, and what the principles are behind any decisions made. That would be a basic affront to freedom.

Nebulous, intangible entities with the power to perpetrate or retaliate with no accountability, are extremely dangerous.

I see a significant dearth of information here, information that is in the public interest whoever is behind it.

[graycat]

Supposedly CloudFlare has ways to trace and then block a DDoS attack. So, maybe they know the origin of the NK DDoS attack if it was a DDoS.

[autokad]

i would suspect that if it was a retaliation and secret to the public, it would certainly not be secret in negotiations and what not.