WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama moved to prevent US anger at North Korea from spiraling out of control yesterday by saying the massive hacking of Sony Pictures was not an act of war but instead was cyber-vandalism.
The hack attack and subsequent threats of violence against theaters showing the film prompted Sony to withdraw a comedy The Interview prepared for release to movie theatres during the holiday season. Obama put the hack in the context of a crime.
“No, I don’t think it was an act of war,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union with Candy Crowley” show. “I think it was an act of cyber vandalism that was very costly, very expensive. We take it very seriously. We will respond proportionately.”
Obama said one option was to return North Korea to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, from which Pyongyang was removed six years ago. At a time when so much information is digitized, “both state and non-state actors are going to have the capacity to disrupt our lives in all sorts of ways,” he said. “We have to do a much better job of guarding against that. We have to treat it like we would treat, you know, the incidence of crime, you know, in our countries.”
Reuters
