I work in the security industry, so my point of view about both the incidence and importance of security vulnerabilities (and subsequent hacking disclosures) is

I work in the security industry, so my point of view about both the incidence and importance of security vulnerabilities (and subsequent hacking disclosures) is probably unrealistically skewed. I offer my bias as a caveat. That said, I don't see a rise in hacking incidents. What I do see, is that hacking is currently part of the zeitgeist, so much like when someone tells you about a red car and you start to notice red cars all over the place, the collective focus on security is just bringing more incidents to light. Quantifying hacker activity is akin to quantifying IP piracy, in that there's really no good way to accurately capture the real numbers. For many years, publicizing breaches was anathema, so the general public were left unaware just how commonplace attacks were. If you want to see remnants of this mindset, just ask a security consultancy for references of other clients they've worked with (It's like asking for a list of someone's sexual partners). We're now at a point where there is more pressure to go public when an incident occurs (as well as things being more difficult to hide). Even if I remove my cynical security consultant fez (which would make me salivate on the benefits to my livelihood based on the public perception of the state of internet security), I think it's probably a good thing for this stuff to be in the public sphere.