Comment by 12_throw_away

If you are being attacked, causing your attacker to misdirect and otherwise waste their resources is almost universally regarded as a defensive action.

The attacker here was trying to use a software agent to run DOS attacks. Perhaps they were a "naive noob outsider", perhaps they misconfigured something. It is not generally the victim's responsibility to try to figure this out.

And it is definitely not the victim's responsibility to determine the attacker's state of mind if they don't even have any way to contact them. In this case, the attacker was using their software agent specifically to avoid interacting with the targets of their attack.