I like your snarky attitude. I deserve nothing less.

I am grateful to you for pointing out the things I screwed up on and will go correct them.

A) make it clear that I am referring to the first US cyber war -- not cyber war overall. B) I totally screwed up on the Flame/Stuxnet timing. C) Obama! My own friggin' fault for going for a very minor sarcasm when I should have double checked.

The Iranians being ranked among the big three when it comes to cyberwar is far too subjective a claim to take seriously. Remember when Iraq was a major threat? An earlier commenter referred to people who have secret information the rest of us don't have. As HL Mencken wrote: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." Give me evidence or leave me alone.

"Second of all, the attacks were not at all "ineffective"; ask any Bank of America customer who uses online banking." As a matter of fact I did. I asked myself and you know what during the whole time that was going on I only had one problem getting to my account. Also, it's hard for me to equate inconveniencing some bank customers with wrecking Iran's uranium processing. Asking the NSA for help may mean the banks are being smart and anticipating problems, not that they are seeing them now. I didn't say the Iranians couldn't cause problems, just that they hadn't so far.

As to your point about the financial sector being a higher priority target. OK, but why aren't they also targeting other water/energy, etc? Why continue with one so far fruitless line of attack? Are they being lead by the Iranian equivalent of Douglas Haig?

That said, my apologies for my mistakes and very real thanks to you for pointing them out. If you send me an email with your name I will thank you in the post.

Cheers,

CvH