How illegal would it be to attempt to counter-hack SSH Botnets?

Hi there. Appologies if this is the wrong sub, but I'm curious as to the possible repurcussions of running a counter-attacker on the ever-present SSH brute-force attackers. The general idea is to grab the IP attempting to connect to a bait server, then attempt to brute force an SSH connection to that server. If a connection is established, using a basic UN/PWD list, format the system or run a fork bomb on it depending on permission level acquired.

This operation …

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