1. Nation-State Actors Will Eventually Impersonate One Another
No nation has seriously attempted to masquerade as another country when conducting an offensive cyber operation, Mandia said. Countries have sometimes taken steps to plant seeds of doubts at a high level about the origin of the attack, but to date, Mandia said people on the front lines haven't ever seen a threat actor go all out in impersonating the tactics, techniques and procedures of another nation.
Sooner or later, though, Mandia expects that a nation with excellent offensive cyber capabilities will masquerade as an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group from a different nation for false attribution.
A decade ago, Mandia felt that organizations should just focus on defending themselves and not worry about who's attempting to carry out an attack on them. But now, Mandia and FireEye alike firmly believe that attribution is vital for convincing the global community to hold an aggressive nation-state accountable and responsible for its behavior.
