First of all, I find it hard to assume that just because the bandwidth used was so much greater than "previous hacktivist attacks", it must be financially motivated. I can tell you specifically that a well-known hacktivist attack I saw in 2010 had extremely high bandwidth – in fact, the highest bandwidth attack I've ever seen, yet there was no subsequent finding that this attack was criminal in nature. Ultimately, it was discovered that the attack was actually in response to a policy change for the target website.

Second, Robert mentioned that because the attacks came from the same servers as those used by Internet criminals, they must be criminal in nature. Given that the latest trend is to provide servers and other services to criminals (of either the financial or political motivation), it is a stretch to assume that just because the servers used in the so-called "hacktivist attacks" were also used in financially-motivated attacks. I don't think we have enough proof that the hacktivist attacks were actually financially motivated.

Fundamentally, the criminal side of the Internet has become much more homogenous lately and because of that, it is inaccurate to make assumptions about the motivations for various attacks based on commonalities across attack types.