Was Skynet hacked?

Question

In Terminator canon it is established that Skynet gains self-awareness shortly after it is brought online. Skynet then starts Judgement Day by launching a nuclear attack on either Russia or humanity in general, depending on the movie, followed by the deployment of autonomous Terminator robots.

However, Skynet lacks both the proper motive to destroy humanity and the processing power to gain sentience - in Terminator 3 Skynet's processing power is announced to be 60 TFLOPS ("per second", erroneously) while a modern gaming graphics card can dish out 5 TFLOPS.

Is it possible that the attack was actually caused by a hacker attack from a third party wanting to destroy both USA and Russia?

Harley Quinn · Answer

In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines movie, Skynet infected most part of civilian Internet.

Robert Brewster: Skynet? The virus has infected Skynet?
  John Connor: Skynet IS the virus. It's the reason everything's falling apart!
  Terminator: Skynet has become self aware. In one hour it will initiate a massive nuclear attack on its enemy. 
  
  John Connor: By the time Skynet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shutdown.

Do you still think about processing power problem?

As far as the canon goes, there was no hacker involved. And yes, Skynet attacked whole of humanity, not just Russia.

Stefan · Answer

I believe that in Terminator 2, the Terminator explains that Skynet's attack was defensive. When they tried to pull the plug and shut it down it immediately attacked the Soviet Union knowing that they counter attack would wipe out its enemies in the US.

So according to the Terminator the attack was not caused by a hacking operation.

Was Skynet hacked?

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