A much more competent article written by the researchers themselves explained that they did contact the Iceland ISP involved in one of the attacks. Their reply stated that it was caused by a bug in a vendor's software that was resolved after a patch. The ISP wasn't interested in looking into it any further.
Also interestingly, somebody tried to submit that article yesterday. I know because I tried to submit it myself, and found that I'd been scooped. It got no responses and almost no upvotes, until allthingsd added the "MITM" keyword that people here recognize. It might be inaccurate - the attack seems to enable MITM rather than being MITM itself - but it got some much needed publicity for the story.
If an ISP is involved in a major hijacking like this, and doesn't sufficiently explain their actions -- shouldn't ISPs start refusing to accept routes from their AS? Just like browsers drop CAs that mess up, shouldn't the same happen to ISPs?
http://www.renesys.com/2013/11/mitm-internet-hijacking/