Every dark cloud has a silver lining, and the recent hacker attacks on MT.Net are no exception. Once I had safely reassembled the website and taken measures against active attacks, I realized what risk hackers run when they attempt remote code execution attacks like the one they ran on my site: they expose the location of their hacker code!
After repelling a couple of attacks per day, I got wise and began to contact the owners of the websites used to attack my site, politely letting them know their servers had been compromised. After doing this for five or so websites, the hacker attacks against my site all but dried up! Perhaps I hit a nerve?
It’s still usually not worth the trouble to track hackers back to their original IP addresses (or at least, not worth the trouble for anyone lacking search warrant power), but taking away a few of a hacker’s precious hideouts sends a message that messing with me comes at a cost.