Back in the olden days of IRC, there was times when entire regions of the internet were taken offline resulting from a ddos for personal vendettas. For exactly

Back in the olden days of IRC, there was times when entire regions of the internet were taken offline resulting from a ddos for personal vendettas. For exactly that reason too - they attack the weakest link and often it isn't the host directly. In this case - it really could be anything. The cost of one of these attacks is next to zero. Rarely will the botnet owner lose any machines resulting from an attack. The unfortunate thing after one of these attacks is you have no way of preventing it or going after the source.