This being some sort of attack makes total sense to me, how much do we all rely on our internet and computers day to day. Almost everything needs to use computers these days, even if some small company doesn't use the internet something else, a supplier, payroll, etc uses the internet. If there was a serious issue with the internet going down, even only for one day, I foresee very bad things happening in this country very quickly. Economy, communication, even law enforcement would all have serious issues.
In my personal life I'm seeing a lot of "signs" that I need to not rely on my computers as much. These major underseas cables getting cut, accidents or not, still causes serious issues. My school was cut off from the internet for about 90min real early this morning and incoming Internet traffic was rerouted overseas (can you say malicious). My school is very technical, although they are trying to play this incident off. Also this morning was class registration and at a very critical time where I needed it my laptop (only machine i used for school stuff) had it's HD fail which happened to destroy years of data, mostly I can live without but I did kinda want all the pictures I took. Personally I'm feeling like I need to cut my losses and severely minimize my use of computers.