Not quite, it says "If the attacker has a bigger fire hose of data than the defender has, the attacker wins" and "the size and scale of these probes—and especially their persistence—points to state actors" which is not quite the same as saying you need to own the bandwidth. For example, DNS amplification can be used "to turn initially small queries into much larger payloads, which are used to bring down the victim’s servers".
So maybe there are other techniques which might allow for similar leverage. Neither is the article conclusive about "state actors", they are merely "pointed to". As for expertise ... I don't doubt there are people out there who have it or might acquire it. So it's still an interesting question imo.
OK, perhaps I phrased it slightly wrong. I can't play, because I don't have the bandwidth or the expertise. I think that most of us on this board are in that category. (There's expertise here, but most of it isn't on the level of these attacks.)
Not quite, it says "If the attacker has a bigger fire hose of data than the defender has, the attacker wins" and "the size and scale of these probes—and especially their persistence—points to state actors" which is not quite the same as saying you need to own the bandwidth. For example, DNS amplification can be used "to turn initially small queries into much larger payloads, which are used to bring down the victim’s servers".
https://www.incapsula.com/ddos/attack-glossary/dns-amplifica...
So maybe there are other techniques which might allow for similar leverage. Neither is the article conclusive about "state actors", they are merely "pointed to". As for expertise ... I don't doubt there are people out there who have it or might acquire it. So it's still an interesting question imo.