"each packet was sent only one hop"
According to the FCC, the equivalent TTL was infinity. These packets are not standard TCP packets, I believe, they are proprietary Infinera packets, at least over the management channel, anyway.
Each time one of the bad packets hit a node, the node spammed *all* neighboring nodes with the same packets due to the broadcast address. That's the main problem, not the TTL, IMHO.
C.