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.