Hack-a-thon has started

So it's official, it's a free-for-all hacking contest on a world-wide basis. Up until now, we suspected - kind of knew - that governments had cyber-armies to act offensively or defensively against other organizations or enemy nations.

Stuxnet told us how some countries see the internet as the next battlefield. It was possible to make a very targeted and effective attack while keeping the identity of the organization pretty much anonymous. Yes, we all kind of know that it was the US or Israel or both but there's no official word being said about it. This is very handy to keep nice diplomatic relations going unchanged.

But apparently, all this changed this week when news surfaced that the MI6 (British intelligence agency) hacked into the Al-Qaeda online magazine and changed their bomb creation how-to guides by cupcake recipes. Read more on it here. As ridiculous a story as this may seem, it tells us something very important, in my eyes: government agencies hack and they're not afraid to tell us.

In my opinion, this is as stupid as planting bombs into their training camps or killing their leader in his summer house in Pakistan. Why? Because this gives them a place to direct their newfound anger. If the hack is kept anonymous, they can be mad but they won't know at whom. Now they have a new somebody to hate (yeah, long list...). Not smart.

As anybody who has played Diplomacy in their lifetime knows, you can attack your neighbor, you just need to keep a straight face about it. Just sayin'...