WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama declared that Sony "made a mistake" in shelving a satirical film about a plot to assassinate North Korea's leader, and he pledged the U.S. would respond "in a place and manner and time that we choose" to the hacking attack on Sony that led to the withdrawal. The U.S. decision to openly blame North Korea — which involved agreement by the State Department and intelligence agencies — escalated a global game of brinkmanship. Sony Pictures chief executive Michael Lynton said it was the president who was mistaken, noting that Sony canceled the release only after all major theater chains decided not to show the movie. [...] the Homeland Security Department concluded those threats were not credible, and the top multiplex chains in North America dropped "The Interview" only after Sony informed them it would not protest if the theaters pulled the film. Lynton did not indicate whether Sony planned to release the movie on DVD or through video-on-demand services, which are not controlled by theaters, but the company suggested that was an option in a statement late Friday. A Japanese analyst said that blaming the theaters was a lame excuse, but added that Sony Pictures may be worried about further releases of proprietary data that could cause far greater financial damage to the company. In a taunting new email, the hackers told Sony that executives were "very wise" to cancel the movie's release and warned the studio never to release the film "in any form." [...] the FBI said, those clues included similarities to other tools developed by North Korea in specific lines of computer code, encryption algorithms and data deletion methods. More significantly, the FBI discovered that computer Internet addresses known to be operated by North Korea were communicating directly with other computers used to deploy and control the hacking tools and collect the stolen Sony files. An internal FBI investigative document obtained by The Associated Press identified the computers in the Sony hacking as operating in New York, Thailand, Poland, Italy, Bolivia, Singapore and Cyprus. Hacking back at North Korean targets by U.S. government experts could encourage further attacks against American targets.
Reported by SFGate 22 hours ago.
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