I heard once about a tire shop that drummed up business by strewing nails along the highway around it. Somewhere outside America; India or Thailand or somewhere else. Anyway, that kind of business practice wouldn't get you far in the Western world, so it seems unlikely.

OTOH, if I had a botnet and I wanted to see how powerfully it could DDOS without drawing a lot of mainstream media attention, github might be good for target practice. They have better infrastructure than most, and they always do detailed write-ups afterwards.

OT: the urban legend about tire shops putting nails in the neighborhoods' is very widespread. I have heard about it in at least three countries, and I recall my school teacher telling me about it in '91.

I sort of expect it wouldn't be an effective practice anywhere.

It's an urban legend until you actually catch a nail and there is a tire shop conveniently located not 100 yards away. True story, Indian reservation in BC, Canada. Who cares if it's a tacky business model or an urban legend. It works.

did you mean "who DDOS'es Github"?

Probably somebody pissed off their pull request was refused.

You do hear rumours of mafia types holding sites to ransom by DDOS... that was one of my thoughts

Assuming you mean github: people who want to cause chaos.

Some men just want to watch the world burn.