This was my point. The damages go beyond stopping the release of a movie. “The Interview” wasn’t even part of the discussion until well after the breach, when speculation began about North Korea. Plus, if it’s that easy to train people with minimal computer exposure to become master hackers, so many more companies and government agencies than Sony would be in the same boat - groups like Anonymous would do a lot more damage than they have. We’re supposed to believe the various law enforcement agencies have incredibly good security on their computers and Sony did not?
A radio commentator I heard said that Sony had laid off a large number of people recently, including a lot of IT people. I’m more inclined to believe an ex-employee with a grudge and administrator passwords was responsible.
I also suspect people well above the bottom tier, the ones who when fired would expect several years’ buyout, probably are a lot less careful about content rules for what they put in email.
You also have to suspect this has been going on for a while to offload all this information - full email databases, reams of data files, planting nasty viruses or Trojans to wipe everything company-wide.