Its no simpler now than it used to be. People have been saying that (and citing the whole 14yo trope) since the 80's. It does require skill, even if you're just using scripts.

What would give them more technical credibility in you eyes? If they wrote the attack themselves? In C? In Assembly? We all automate the hell out of things and lean toward the highest level languages for server automation anyway, why demean them when everything is a 'simpler game now with scripts that any regular Joe can run.' Have you seen Chef or Puppet, Flask or Rails?