Obama warns N. Korea over Sony hack: 'We will respond'
Washington
(AFP) - US President Barack Obama on Friday warned North Korea it would
face retaliation for a crippling cyber attack on Sony Pictures over an
irreverent film comedy that infuriated Pyongyang.
AFP
Fri, Dec 19, 2014, 7:29 PM EST - U.S. Markets closed
Obama warns N. Korea over Sony hack: 'We will respond'
By Susan Stumme
1 hour ago
Washington (AFP) - US
President Barack Obama on Friday warned North Korea it would face
retaliation for a crippling cyber attack on Sony Pictures over an
irreverent film comedy that infuriated Pyongyang.
Obama said the
movie giant had "made a mistake" in canceling the Christmas Day release
of "The Interview," a madcap romp about a CIA plot to kill North Korean
leader Kim Jong-Un.
Sony defended its decision, made after
anonymous hackers invoked the 9/11 attacks in threatening cinemas
screening the film, prompting theater chains to say they would not risk
showing it.An envoy for Pyongyang denied the secretive state was behind the hacking, which led to the release of a trove of embarrassing emails, scripts and other internal communications, including information about salaries and employee health records.
Addressing reporters after the FBI said Pyongyang was to blame, Obama said Washington would never bow to "some dictator."
"We will respond. We will respond proportionately and we'll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose," Obama said.
"I'm sympathetic to the concerns that they faced. Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake," he said.
"We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States."
- 'Acts of intimidation' -
Earlier,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation had said it "now has enough
information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible
for these actions."
"Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior," the agency said in a statement. 
The attackers used malware
to break into the studio and render thousands of Sony Pictures
computers inoperable, forcing the company to take its entire network
offline, the FBI said.
It
said analysis of the software tools used revealed links to other malware
known to have been developed by "North Korean actors."
It also
cited "significant overlap" between the attack and other "malicious
cyber-activity" with direct links to Pyongyang, including an attack on
South Korean banks carried out by North Korea."We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there," the FBI said.
There was "no evidence" that North Korea had acted in concert with another country, Obama said, after reports that China -- Pyongyang's only ally -- had possibly provided assistance.
Senior Republican lawmaker
John McCain -- the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee -- called the cyber attack an "act of war."
And
Senior Democratic Senator Robert Menendez urged Secretary of State John
Kerry to consider again designating Pyongyang a state sponsor of
terrorism.
"This is an
unacceptable act of international censorship which curtails global
artistic freedom and, in aggregate, would seem to meet the definitions
for acts of terrorism," Menendez wrote to Kerry.
For his part, Obama referred to it as a "crime."North Korea's mission to the United Nations firmly denied any involvement.
"Our country has no relation with the hacker," North Korean political counselor Kim Song told AFP.
- 'Costs and consequences' -
Though denying involvement in the brazen November 24 cyber attack, Pyongyang has nevertheless hailed it as a "righteous deed."
The
North's top military body, the National Defense Commission, slammed
Sony for "abetting a terrorist act while hurting the dignity of the
supreme leadership," according to state news agency KCNA.
Hollywood filmmakers urged US authorities to do more to protect them against future cyber attacks.
"We
stand by our ('The Interview') director members Seth Rogen and Evan
Goldberg and hope that a way can be found to distribute the film by some
means, to demonstrate that our industry is not cowed by extremists of
any type," said Directors Guild of America chief Paris Barclay.
Free
speech advocates and foreign policy hawks have slammed Sony's decision
to pull "The Interview" as cowardice in the face of a hidden enemy.
McCain
said it set a "troubling precedent that will only empower and embolden
bad actors to use cyber as an offensive weapon even more aggressively in
the future."
But Sony
vigorously defended the move, and said it still hoped to release "The
Interview" on a different platform -- perhaps on demand or online.
"We have not caved, we have not given in, we have persevered and we have not backed down," studio boss Michael Lynton told CNN.
"We have always had every desire to have the American public see this movie."
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