U.S. expected to formally blame North Korea for Sony cyberattack

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities were expected to announce on Friday that investigators had determined that North Korea was behind a devastating cyberattack against SONY (JP6758.TK)Pictures, setting up a possible confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang.

The probe into the hack found North Korea was involved and that there may also be a Chinese link, either through collaboration with Chinese actors or the use of Chinese servers to mask the origin of the attack, a U.S. official said.

The findings were expected to be announced later on Friday morning by federal authorities, the official said.

The White House has called the strike against the big Hollywood studio a matter of national security and said it was weighing a ?proportional response." But it stopped short of pointing the finger at North Korea.

President Barack Obama was expected to address the issue at a 1:30 p.m. (13:30 EST) end-of-year news conference.

North Korea has previously denied involvement, and a North Korean U.N. diplomat on Thursday declined to comment on the accusation that Pyongyang was responsible.

The attack on Sony, more than three weeks ago, is the most destructive hacking of a company on U.S. soil, conducted by hackers calling themselves "Guardians of Peace."

It brought down the computer network at Sony Pictures Entertainment, prompted the leak of embarrassing emails, and led to Sony's cancellation of "The Interview," a comic film that culminates in a scene depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

U.S. movie theaters had said they would not show the film after hackers made threats against cinemas and audiences. Many in Hollywood and Washington criticized Sony's cancellation as caving in to the hackers.

Sony Pictures is a unit of Sony Corp.

U.S. experts say options for the Obama administration could include cyber retaliation, financial sanctions and even a boost in U.S. military support to South Korea to send a stern message to North Korea.

Another could be to return North Korea to a U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism from which it was removed in 2008, but the effect of any response could be limited given North Korea's isolation and the fact that it is already heavily sanctioned.

Obama?s national security team has struggled to come up with a response tough enough to get its message across but not so extreme as to provoke North Korea to engage in further cyber warfare.

A dilemma for the administration was how much of its evidence it could make public without divulging the technological means it has to trace cyber attacks back to the source.

(Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by David Storey)

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