REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, WASHINGTON -- US President Barack Obama moved to prevent U.S. anger at North Korea from spiraling out of control on Sunday by saying the massive hacking of Sony Pictures was not an act of war but instead was cyber-vandalism.

Washington's longstanding dispute with North Korea, which for years has centered on its nuclear weapons program, has entered new territory with the accusation that Pyongyang carried out an assault on a major Hollywood entertainment company.

Obama and his advisers are weighing how to punish North Korea after the FBI concluded on Friday that Pyongyang was responsible. North Korea has denied it was to blame. The US president 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" show that aired on Sunday. "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 US list of state sponsors of terrorism, from which Pyongyang was removed six years ago.

North Korea vowed on Sunday to hit back against any US retaliation.

"Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole US mainland, the cesspool of terrorism, by far surpassing the 'symmetric counteraction' declared by Obama," according to North Korea state news agency KCNA.

In the CNN interview, which was taped on Friday, Obama acknowledged that in a digitized world "both state and non-state actors are going to have the capacity to disrupt our lives in all sorts of ways."

"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."

Republican Senator John McCain disagreed with Obama, telling CNN the attack was the manifestation of a new kind of warfare.

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