Is this an attack? Is it orchestrated by the you know who's?
It's more like BCH trying to survive. All things being equal (sha256, 10 minutes block target) a lower value chain cannot attract enough miners to operate at a proper functional level. It is destined to experience periods of very slow blocks and then very fast blocks, as difficulty readjusts.
In order to circumvent this, asymmetric mining (bumps difficulty down every once in a while when blocks are slow - but has no counterbalancing slowing down to cure the extra emission) has been employed which increases the inflation rate a lot. In BCH's short life, it has already pumped out 120.000 more coins[1] to become "more attractive" for mining. This is not sustainable for multiple reasons.
If you fix the much-increased inflation rate to become more viable for the future, then you lose your attractiveness as a mining option - because all things being equal, the coins mined are less valuable. Plus BTC also offers fee incentives (3-4-5-6 btc per block).
The only hope that BCH has if it wants to survive (without a non-viable inflationary emission), is to increase its value. A lot. This pump might have been related to trying to make BCH a bit more viable prior to its next hard fork that will supposedly "fix" the asymmetric inflationary emission. But if this gets fixed, then you go back to being unattractive for mining - and thus getting a slow chain that can only be maintained by the "charity" of miners who operate at a loss, or rape-mined when its difficulty is low enough to attract mining attention (and then left hanging at a high diff again).
I don't see how this can get fixed...
[1]
Bitcoin 16,675,925 BTC
Bitcoin Cash 16,796,225 BCH (+120300 coins)