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Bitcoin's p2p network is subject to various kinds of denial of service attacks.
There, I said it.
There, I said it.
Bitcoin is still vulnerable to DOS attacks. I'm not sure anybody knows how to prevent DOS attacks on a p2p network that allows untrusted/unverified peers to join (but I'd very much like a networking expert to tell me I'm wrong, and would like it even more if they volunteered to fix it....).
Asking hackers to prove that they can DOS the bitcoin network wouldn't prove anything, it would just slow down transactions for however long they decided to keep up the attack.
Giving bounties for uncovering vulnerabilities besides a network-denial-of-service attack is a good idea (demonstrated on the -testnet, preferably).