DISCONNECT! But seriously - hackers are always a step ahead and, I believe becoming a "dime a dozen." The reward to cost ratio can be enormous - ask Netflix.

The mechanism is already in place (the internet) so all a would-be hacker needs to do is to figure out the method.

It is so easy to hide. I've been trying to track Chinese gov't hacker activity, but when they hide in civillian IP ranges it gets very difficult to differentiate. Most bad bots don't use unique UAs and hide in a sea of Mozilla. The internet infrastructure is just not designed to detect and therefore protect against hackers. It is so easy to jump countries, to combine countries in a coordinated attack. Too many places to hide, to obfuscate, to masquerade as a human browsing the internet.

Hacking is the new frontier, where all countries big and small are equal. It is also super cheap. All you really need is brains and a mission, and rent some space somewhere in the world that are not too picky about shady bots. If you are outed, pick up your luggage and move to another willing host.

The Chinese have a huge hacking operation. They also cooperate with other countries, predominately Russia; but also include Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Malaysia and Singapore. Back in 2008-2009 they also used Peru's and Chili"s IPs as they built their internet infrastructure. The big internet attack back in July of 2008, which was attributed to the North Koreans, in all likely hood was done at the request and assistance of the Chinese. Web sites related to Tibet all over the world were hacked and destroyed at the same instant. This was a time when demonstrations against the Chinese occupation of Tibet were happen, that followed the Olympic torch around the world that was heading to Beijing. The Chinese also, I firmly believe, use the services of Zhou Pizhong out of Kansas City. Zhou has been indicted for spamming and phishing, but still operates about 10,000 IPs which he uses for hacking as well as the spamming/phishing operations. He uses a lot of datashack IPs. I have been battling against them for almost 10 years. they recently made a huge uptick in their hacking activities following the publication of a book review in an internationally highly esteemed web site and magazine. They had one sentence in the review referring to the occupation of Tibet that was well documented in the book.