[Petrushka]

The threat of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor" is completely unfounded and ridiculous, but frankly that's what I'd expect from Liberman. Hackers are extremely good at taking down specific sites that have specific issues with their security, not disabling entire swaths of networked systems. When some sect of Anonymous decided to attack Israeli computers during Pillar of Defense for instance, they claimed victory because they took down nearly 500 Israeli systems...which were just random Israeli websites with major security flaws, mainly grocery stores, locksmiths, and one government website dealing with economic investment. Such an operation is not difficult, yet accomplishes nothing. Actually attacking large numbers of computers used in the US, especially those used for defensive capabilities, is essentially impossible, because each one requires a different attack, assuming there isn't some massive as hell security hole sitting in the middle of ubiquitous server software, which I'd say is unlikely. Sure you can take down the Texas Water Utility, but you couldn't take down the utilities of every water system in the United States simultaneously without spending a significant amount of time on it and hope nothing changes once you crack one and move on to the next. Nobody, not even China, has the personnel to hit all of our major systems at once.

Hell, Not even taking down the DNS network would do all that much, as most computers that form the backbone of our medical and financial systems use IP addresses, instead of URL's, as their primary method of connecting to other servers. The military doesn't even use the main IP system, they have their own.

As most people who actually work within this world know, the primary way of gaining access to systems are social engineering, system defaults, and insecure handling of access information. The world has gotten smart enough now where practically all of our important infrastructure are very well guarded against these attacks. That isn't to say they don't happen, but it's rare, too rare for the possibilities of a full-scale "cyber-attack."