Anthropic selection effects make hostile expansive aliens improbable.
Assume that life is plentiful and hostile civs are common. If that was the case then most observers such as ourselves would find themselves on unusually early planets. Instead our planet is somewhate late in the order of all habitable planets to form in our galaxy, and is roughly in the middle for all habitable planets in the universe.
But in fact last research said that our planet is in only first 8 per cent of all habitable planets in the Universe, so probably the opposite is true and future universe is full planet-colonizing alien civilizations.
But if SETI attack is only way of space colonization, no starships, in this case before-radio civilizations will be distributed randomly.
KIC 8462852, or the WTF (Where's the Flux?) star, is an F-type main sequence star about 1,480 ly away. It's a little larger and more massive than the sun, and a few times brighter. Age is uncertain, but probably older rather than younger.
Kepler observations over the last few years reveal very strange large and aperiodic flux variations (up to 20%) - of the general form predicted by some ETI megastructure models. However there doesn't appear to be any excess infrared.
The star's fluctuations were discovered by the PlanetHunters team. In the WTF paper they review a large number of unlikely natural explanations and settle on an unusual comet swarm as the most likely scenario.
Abstract of the WTF paper:
From "Comets or Aliens?", on the Planet Hunters blog: " However, so far over 100 professional scientists have had a look at the lightcurves and not managed to come up with a working solution."
In a another recent paper Jason Wright et al discusses the WTF star in more detail and critiques the comet theory.
The Search for Extraterrestial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV: the Signatures and Information Content of Transiting Megastructures:
Jason Wright discusses WTF here on his blog.
Big reddit discussion on r/askscience here.