There seems to be a bit of a cyber war going on between North Korea and Sony Pictures.

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Sony Pictures was attacked by North Korea. The studio is still holding off on its official announcement, but by now it seems clear that the attack came in retaliation for the upcoming film The Interview, a comedy about an attempt to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The burning question though, other than the obvious of why North Korea are taking a fictional movie so seriously, is how did they manage to pull off this very public hack?

We don’t know how that server was compromised yet, but phishing attacks and delayed fallout from a recent PlayStation attack are high on the list. Luckily for the North Koreans, the dump seems to have contained enough password files to get them full access to the system.

Once they were in it seems like they had a field day…

From there, they caused as much trouble as possible. The entire corporate system locked up, showing a red skeleton that announced as bluntly as possible, “You’ve been hacked by #GOP.” Hard drives were wiped, email accounts froze and employees were cautioned not to connect to the office Wi-Fi. Sony Pictures employees were forced to do business on landlines and fax machines, according to The LA Times.

Sony fired the first blow by screening The Interview, and they should have known retaliation was imminent when North Korean officials denounced the film as an act of war.

I don’t think they expected a full on cyber attack though. Very public, very real. Cyber shots fired people, take cover.

For more check out The Verge