Indeed: I have to think it was not a planned or desirable outcome to anybody. If the intended situation is to be able to (for instance) set up a coup attempt o

Indeed: I have to think it was not a planned or desirable outcome to anybody. If the intended situation is to be able to (for instance) set up a coup attempt on the target country, have it come off well enough to produce chaos, and THEN have your tame cybercriminals knock out key infrastructure, that would be an extremely effective act of war. Freaking people out while not destroying the target country is a bad, bad misstep. They did indeed kick the hornets' nest, but so ineffectively that the best response would be to try and cover the whole thing up and pretend it was nothing. Might work for some, but I doubt the US government is amused.