"...the fact that North Korea's Internet was back up 'is pretty good evidence that the outage wasn't caused by a state-sponsored attack, otherwise it'd likely still be down for the count.'"

Not sure I agree with this statement.    I think it was enough in the new cyber warfare world we live in - just to remind the N. Koreans just how the Internet actually works.    Did they get it back from their own efforts or was it restored ?   

I am also disturbed that the U.S. would seriously consider using any more than the normal recourse for the actions of Sony.  As the President so correctly stated, this is not a reason to declare war.

The only war the needs to be going on is within the hallways of Sony's server rooms.

@Dr. T    I hold the same sort of doubt.  Let's be serious N. Korea is not the only place where Sony might be disliked.  Even if it was N,Korea, I am sure they would have been smart enough to "outsource" this particular project. 

And I have a feeling they didn't have to look too hard either.

Instead of getting angry to attackers or trying to get even we need to figure it what we do so we can avoid similar types of attacks.

@Dr. T    Couldn't agree more.   What we are actually witnessing is how leaders of industry ( film in this case ) mishandle the "new-age" world in which we live.  I have heard everything from Sony except what they are doing so that this might never happen again. 

I guess they really have no time to answer that question as they are busy working on their latest breech - their Playstation feeds.  

Sony is really becoming a national "eye-sore".    It might be time for those over paid leaders at Sony to actually earn their pay.

Don't count on it.