I'm really not surprised. The Chinese government is already under suspicion of attacking Google and several other major websites of US-based companies. It is at least certain that Chinese hackers were the perpetrators. If they can do it, it's a given that the United States is at least on par, if not light years ahead. I will say that many of the leaked diplomatic cables hint to pressure from Middle Eastern allies to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

@Godwin's Law

One thing a lot of people forget is that the US government has been in the cyber warfare business a lot longer than people realize, at least since the '90s. Obviously, it has made some huge, fumbling mistakes due to the natural inefficiencies of such a large bureaucracy. But to doubt the government's ability to apply itself to doing really malicious stuff is to underestimate their determination.

When you think about it, terrorism is actually a very unpopular form of warfare. It's cost-intensive, the skillsets are hard to come by, and the intelligence gathering is not always solid. There's never a full-on confrontation with troops in Iraq anymore because the odds are clearly stacked against the "insurgents" or whatever the new euphemism is. That, and they probably just don't have the numbers. Computers, computer networks, and the Internet are the only "level" playing fields left. It's the true modern warfare.

Don't get me wrong, conventional warfare involving boots-on-the-ground is still in play. Though if the US Department of Defense's expanding budget since 9/11 is any indication, the battlefield is shifting to more unconventional, even covert, activities.

It was as simple as using a program to prevent USB sticks to automatically run certain programs to prevent this from happening. A lot of major important companies with an air gap have this. One person could have wrote a trojan based on the same exploits. The other programming takes longer to write but still I doubt the "10.000" hours of programming Microsoft claims. Unless it is done by themselves.

It happens all the time, it is nothing new. The question is why only few people with bad intentions exploit all of this?

>> It is at least certain that Chinese hackers were the perpetrators. If they can do it, it's a given that the United States is at least on par, if not light years ahead<<
- Spoken like a true American, and highly probable to be completely incorrect. The smart money would be on China being ahead of the US in this area, though the US will be somewhat near the top in any case.

As to the topic, this is indeed an interesting time. If some objectives can be achieved without actually putting "boots on the ground" and guns in the hand it will hopefully lead to a slightly safer world, well safer than if certain governments just march on into random nations and start demanding things.

You_Fool: "Spoken like a true American, and highly probable to be completely incorrect."

We'll just never know, will we?

"The smart money would be on China being ahead of the US in this area, though the US will be somewhat near the top in any case."

So you would completely rule out Israel having any hand in this?