filipmaertens

Indeed there is no justification for any of this. I'm curious how government spin doctors will handle this one though :)

The main target appears to be the BICS unit within the Belgacom's group, which is a wholesale operation with a strong division in Dubai (peering to du/EITC and Etisalat), covering Middle East switching/termination. Having access to BICS infrastructure could give potential to tier-1 interception of middle east peers. At least, that could be one of the many (many) motives for targeting BICS imho. While Belgium may be an allied country, it might supply/export services to other countries that may seemingly be other allied countries to the U.S. but where a hidden agenda is played out according to the age old saying "trust, but verify" :) Also, if designing attack trees, you take the weakest links in order to have a successful attack. Taking Belgium/Belgacom route may have proven to be a valid option so it seems ("hey, if the Belgians don't care to be without government for over two years, they sure as hell won't care about a hacking") :p

Counterattacking is a big no-no in most countries, so I would stay from that offensive security stuff. Unless of course, you're working for a government, in which case you need to look at the conventions of warfare and see if you can declare war on another country where the attack allegedly originated from ;-))) Tough sell :-)