The DoS attacks on the Testnet are not planned by the Zcash team, nor are they a result of legitimate users editing their files.
The strange peer behavior was noticed on the Testnet and this issue was created on github:
You can see by the notes that the team was not expecting the behavior. Also note the Block # that the machines were advertising “1337” = leet. This disruption has actually helped the team identify a potential weakness which will now be patched.
This shows why Testnets are such an important tool in development.