Sen. John McCain announced he will hold a hearing to investigate the high-profile cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment once he becomes the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Late last month, hackers thought to be connected to North Korea broke into Sony's network and stole troves of data in retaliation of the studio's film "The Interview," which centers on a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

In response, Sony Pictures pulled the release of the controversial comedy "The Interview," which was scheduled for Christmas day, after the hackers threatened to launch 9/11-style attacks on all theaters showing the movie.

Sony's decision to comply with the threats, however, has sparked lots of outrage, especially from McCain, who says he plans to delve into cybersecurity during the first two weeks of the next Congress.

McCain described the cyberattack as "an act of war" and stated that the U.S. should strike back against North Korea with a cyberattack of its own. He also criticized Sony's compliance to the hack demands.

"This is the greatest blow to free speech that I've seen in my lifetime probably," McCain said Friday during an interview on Arizona radio station KFYI 550's "The Mike Broomhead Show," according to CNN.

"We have to respond in kind. We have lots of capability in cyber and we ought to start cranking that up," McCain said, reports The Hill.

McCain added Sony should "suck it up, show the movie."

On the other hand, the White House has said the government does not plan to respond with a cyberattack and would instead take a "proportional" action.

TMZ also reported on Saturday that in addition to canceling the film's Christmas day release, Sony has taken heed to another hacker demand by removing "The Interview" from its social media pages.

On Friday, the hackers sent a threat to top level Sony execs saying, "We want everything related to the movie, including its trailers, as well as its full version down from any website hosting them immediately."

The movie studio then obliged, deleting all of the tweets from the movie's Twitter page along with the Facebook page and footage from its YouTube page.

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