This article is more than 1 year old
Norks: FBI's Sony Pictures' hacking allegations are 'groundless slander'
Kim Jong Un's officials demand joint probe with USA
"Grave consequences" have been threatened by North Korea, after the FBI alleged on Friday that Norks were behind the savage hack of struggling film studio Sony Pictures.
The Kim Jong Un-led country demanded a joint investigation with the US to further probe the incident.
North Korea has denied responsibility for the massive attack on Sony Pictures' computer systems, but an official did label it a "righteous deed".
Pyongyang's state news agency KCNA reported that North Korea had issued warnings about the FBI claims, which US president Barak Obama threw his support behind yesterday.
North Korea said, according to Reuters:
If the US refuses to accept our proposal for a joint investigation and continues to talk about some kind of response by dragging us into the case, it must remember there will be grave consequences.
Meanwhile, the infosec world is wary of the FBI's accusations that North Korea was to blame for the hack attack against Sony Pictures.
"I've been very sceptical throughout and now I have no idea," security guru Bruce Schneier told The Register. He added that the evidence the Feds had presented so far was flimsy at best.
"It's WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] all over again; we're being asked to believe this blind," he said.
Obama: 'Sony made a mistake by yanking The Interview'
Yesterday afternoon, Sony Pictures' chief hit back at Obama for suggesting that the film studio had "made a mistake" for canning the release of its controversial Seth Rogen comedy The Interview.
"The president, the press and public are mistaken," CEO Michael Lynton told CNN.
"We do not own movie theatres. We cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theatres," he added.
Lynton said he disagreed with Obama's assertion that Sony had made a mistake by mothballing The Interview, a film which pokes fun at North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong Un.
Obama said during a press conference yesterday:
We cannot have a society in which some dictators someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.
Sony Pictures issued a statement that underscored its CEO's comments to CNN about why the company apparently had no choice but to cancel the release of The Interview.
For more than three weeks, despite brutal intrusions into our company and our employees' personal lives, we maintained our focus on one goal: getting the film The Interview released. Free expression should never be suppressed by threats and extortion.
The decision not to move forward with the December 25 theatrical release of The Interview was made as a result of the majority of the nation's theatre owners choosing not to screen the film. This was their decision.
Let us be clear – the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it on Christmas Day in theatres, after the theatre owners declined to show it. Without theatres, we could not release it in the theatres on Christmas Day. We had no choice.
Sony Pictures added that it was continuing to search for "alternatives" so that the studio can "release the movie on a different platform." ®