It is more likely than not in my mind that certain people within the U.S. intelligence apparatus took a significant interest in the solution at around that time if not before.  I'm pretty sure that the solution was leveraged by Wikileaks by that time since this is how I first heard of it, and I think that was late 2010.  If such an event (Wikileaks circumventing the U.S. financial embargo) did not spark a significant analysis then our intel personnel are completely incompetent/underfunded and not doing their jobs.  I find that conjecture absurd.