NSA/GCHQ Accused of Hacking Belgian Cryptographer

There has been a lot of news about Bengian cryptographer Jean-Jacques Quisquater having his computer hacked, and whether the NSA or GCHQ is to blame. It's a lot of assumptions and hyperbole, mostly related to the GCHQ attack against the Belgian telcom operator Belgicom.

I'm skeptical. Not about the attack, but about the NSA's or GCHQ's involvement. I don't think there's a lot of operational value in most academic cryptographic research, and Quisquater wasn't involved in practical cryptanalysis of operational ciphers. I wouldn't put it past a less-clued nation-state to spy on academic cryptographers, but more likely this is a more conventional criminal attack. But who knows? Weirder things have happened.