I think that once a civilization fail victim of a SETI atack, it could broadcast for millions or even billions years, spending almost all its resources on it.
The SETI attack civ can't touch civs more elder than it - they could prevent the SETI attack civ before it even forms. So it can only attack civs that come after.
But there are probably much easier attacks available for an elder civ. Dyson sphere broadcasting is a rather ludicrous waste of energy - the same energy budget could allow observation and then simulation of all other bio worlds at a lower level of dev. For a small energy budget the elder civ could launch small probes which could then intervene on each planet as necessary, arbitrarily influencing later civ development - accomplishing anything and more than any SETI attack (constrained to pure photons).
Dyson sphere broadcasting is a rather ludicrous waste of energy - the same energy budget could allow observation and then simulation of all other bio worlds at a lower level of dev.
How do you figure that? A SETI attack can be launched simply by transmitting a signal. How is that a waste of energy compared with vehicular travel?
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.