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looks like it's just an act of cybervandalism. Oh those rascals!

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama says he doesn't consider North Korea's hack of Sony Pictures "an act of war."

"It was an act of cybervandalism," Obama said in an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley that aired Sunday on "State of the Union."

But he stuck by his criticism of Sony's decision to cancel its plans to release the movie "The Interview," which includes a cartoonish depiction of the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, after the country threatened attacks against theaters that showed it.

Obama said in a Friday news conference that Sony made "a mistake," and that he wished the company had called him first. That led Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton to tell CNN that Obama and the public "are mistaken as to what actually happened." He blamed movie theater companies that opted not to show the film, saying they forced Sony's hand.

Obama shot back, saying: "I was pretty sympathetic to the fact that they have business considerations that they got to make. Had they talked to me directly about this decision, I might have called the movie theater chains and distributors and asked them what the story was."

The President told Crowley that his problem wasn't with Sony specifically, but with the precedent the company's decision set.

The FBI on Friday pinned blame on North Korea for a hack into Sony's computer systems. Obama said both foreign governments and hackers outside government present cyberthreats that are part of the modern business landscape.

"If we set a precedent in which a dictator in another country can disrupt through cyber, a company's distribution chain or its products, and as a consequence we start censoring ourselves, that's a problem," Obama said.

"And it's a problem not just for the entertainment industry, it's a problem for the news industry," he said. "CNN has done critical stories about North Korea. What happens if in fact there is a breach in CNN's cyberspace? Are we going to suddenly say, are we not going to report on North Korea?

"So the key here is not to suggest that Sony was a bad actor. It's making a broader point that all of us have to adapt to the possibility of cyberattacks, we have to do a lot more to guard against them."

Lynton, speaking to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, said he was "disappointed" in what Obama said Friday.

"We have not given in. And we have not backed down. We have always had every desire to have the American public see this movie," Lynton said.

But that's not what the company initially said after canceling the film's release.

On Wednesday night, a studio spokesperson said simply, "Sony Pictures has no further release plans for the film."

The nonprofit Human Rights Foundation is pushing a campaign called #HackThemBack, inviting "those who support freedom and democracy" to "help North Korean defectors amplify, refine, and intensify efforts to break the monopoly of information" that the regime imposes on its people.

The group also plans to buy copies of "The Interview" and include them in balloon drops over North Korea, founder Thor Halvorssen said.

http://edition.cnn.c.....vandalism/

I don't know, this sounds kind of threatening

(CNN) -- North Korea is accusing the U.S. government of being behind the making of the movie "The Interview."

And, in a dispatch on state media, the totalitarian regime warns the United States that its "citadels" will be attacked, dwarfing the hacking attack on Sony that led to the cancellation of the film's release.

While steadfastly denying involvement in the hack, North Korea accused U.S. President Barack Obama of calling for "symmetric counteraction."

"The DPRK has already launched the toughest counteraction. Nothing is more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production company is the target of this counteraction. Our target is all the citadels of the U.S. imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans," a report on state-run KCNA read.

"Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole U.S. mainland, the cesspool of terrorism," the report said, adding that "fighters for justice" including the "Guardians of Peace" -- a group that claimed responsibility for the Sony attack -- "are sharpening bayonets not only in the U.S. mainland but in all other parts of the world."

'Act of cybervandalism'

The FBI on Friday pinned blame on North Korea for a hack into Sony's computer systems.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN, Obama called it "an act of cybervandalism," not war.

He said that the United States is going review whether to put North Korea back on a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

"We've got very clear criteria as to what it means for a state to sponsor terrorism. And we don't make those judgments just based on the news of the day," Obama said. "We look systematically at what's been done and based on those facts, we'll make those determinations in the future."

'Dishonest reactionary movie'

While the film was the work of private individuals, North Korea insisted otherwise in its statement. "The DPRK has clear evidence that the U.S. administration was deeply involved in the making of such dishonest reactionary movie," it said.

"The Interview" is a comedy, with plans for an attempted assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a central plot point.

In a CNN interview on Friday, Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton said the studio had not "given in" to pressure from hackers and was still considering ways to distribute the movie.

But that's not what the company initially said after canceling the film's release.

On Wednesday night, a studio spokesperson said simply, "Sony Pictures has no further release plans for the film."

http://edition.cnn.c.....?hpt=hp_t1

North Korea seems to be offline right now, this keeps getting better

WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Korea is experiencing widespread Internet outages. One expert says the country's online access is "totally down."

It's not immediately clear if the Internet connectivity problems were an act of retribution for a major intrusion at Sony Pictures Entertainment that the FBI last week linked to North Korea.

President Barack Obama on Friday said the U.S. government would respond but didn't say how.

The White House declined to comment Monday. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters that of the federal government responses, "some will be seen, some may not be seen."

Doug Madory (Muh-DOOR-ee), director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, said the Internet connectivity problems were discovered in the last 24 hours and have gotten progressively worse to the point that "North Korea's totally down."

http://news.yahoo.co.....18060.html

did live and the psn get DDosed on christmas day?