EWI's Senior Fellow Franz-Stefan Gady was quoted in Al Jazeera America's October 21 article "Facebook warns users of 'state-sponsored' hacking." 

As quoted in this article: One interpretation of Facebook's new “state-sponsored” warning system is as a public relations push “to assuage fears outside the U.S., since Facebook has been collaborating with U.S. government entities and handing over data," said Franz-Stefan Gady, a senior fellow at the EastWest Institute and a founding member of the Worldwide Cybersecurity Initiative. Alternatively, it could also be a message to “whomever is mining these systems” that Facebook is cracking down. 

Experts also noted that the algorithms Facebook uses to determine the identity or affiliation of an attacker remain confidential, making it difficult to know how effective they are. Often, the fingerprints of a state-sponsored actor can be detected by the highly advanced nature or resources required of an attack, or by its targets: namely, government officials or corporate executives with access to sensitive information. But “these sorts of things are happening every second on the Internet,” Gady said, “and it would be really tricky to figure out who is behind every attack.

To read the full article at Al Jazeera America, click here.