knocked the country offline. the disruption reportedly took out key websites 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. 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. reporter: 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 website kcna blank or blooming with flowers. web security experts watching
that s when store officials say as many as 40 million accounts were compromised. two million chase debit card holders that shopped during that time are told they can only withdraw $100 on their debit cards on any one day, and limit total purchases to $300 a day. chase said this is a precaution to protect customer accounts from criminal activity. chase is the grinch that stole christmas from families all across america. the reality is they are doing it to protect themselves and holding people s money hostage. reporter: a target spokeswoman telling abc news the company has activated more fraud protection and answering customer questions adding, our customers need to be vigilant, and we are working to report issues. an all-out effort to salvage a holiday nightmare. aditi roy, abc news, los angeles. so scary for consumers. very interesting, some web security experts say the hackers infected electronic cash registers and may have had help from the inside. so scary.
economy overall. don t even get us started on europe or the tax cuts set to expire and spending cuts due to kick in a few short months from now watching it all is fed chairman ben bernanke who is trying to explain to congress live pictures right now what if anything he plans to do about it without saying too much. felicia taylor is watching from the new york city. felicia, what have we heard and learned so far? reporter: it s a careful dance because obviously the federal reserve chairman can t come out right and say anything ahead of the federal reserve meeting which takes place at the end of june, june 19th and 20th. so it s interesting that the expectation was that the stock market would actually rally in yesterday s session on the fact they were expecting to hear something. what he s been doing though is basically sort of admitting there has been slower than desirable growth in the marketplace and there could be room and the fed has left the door open for further sti