Well don't forget, normal attacks launched from vDOS were around 8 - 16gbps. On the Krebs article, he mentions "the company received an email directly from vDOS claiming credit for the attack" Now, if this holds true, it's likely that the operator of vDOS (Apple J4ck was his moniker) was directing the full resources of the network towards BackConnect. Given that Brian indicated that at any given time vDOS could be launching 10 - 15 times (9 "DDoS years" or something in a few months), the full force of the vDOS network could easily amount to 200gbps.
This behavior is never defensible nor acceptable.
In addition to being in the wrong with BGP hijacking a prefix, it appears that Mr. Townsend had the wrong target, too. We've been attacked a few dozen times by this botnet, and they could never muster anything near 200 gbps worth of traffic. They were orders of magnitude smaller, only around 8-16 gbps depending on attack.
Mr. Townsend's motives were wrong and so was his information.