North Korea on Sunday denied claims that it had hacked into Sony Pictures, calling the allegations a "false rumor" spread by South Korea.

The U.S. film company had come under cyber attack late last month after a series of threats from North Korea for its comedy movie "The Interview," in which the CIA plots to assassinate the country's young leader Kim Jong-un.

"The South Korean group, keen on serving its master, groundlessly linked the hacking attack with the DPRK and floated the 'story about the North's involvement,'" an unnamed spokesman for the policy department of the North's powerful National Defense Commission said. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's formal name.

Pyongyang does not know "where in America the Sony Pictures is situated and for what wrongdoings it became the target of the attack," the North's official Korean Central News Agency cited the spokesman as saying in an interview with the media.

The North said the attack might be a "righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers" with the North in response to its appeal to the world for an anti-U.S. struggle.

Following the attack that knocked down Sony Pictures' Web site and a number of the company's blockbuster films set to be released soon, U.S. news media have said the North might be responsible for the attack, noting that some of the malware used in the attack contained Korean-language code.

However, a spokesman for the North's mission to the United Nations reportedly denied his country's involvement in the hacking attack after the FBI launched an investigation into the case. (Yonhap)