[barbegal]

I don't necessarily buy this story because the facts don't really add up and there is no real evidence that this occurred.

The source of the story is described to be one of Mark's friends "Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend" and not the journalists "We reached out to Tim McGinn and Elisabeth Theodore for comment. Both declined to comment.". Given the evidence is based on a verbal account to a friend there is a slim probability that Mark made the story up.

It also seems odd that the details of the hack are laid out so precisely. It is stated that he found the passwords to exactly two email accounts, one of which belonged to Tim McGinn given that "In one account he accessed, Mark saw an email from Crimson writer Tim McGinn to Cameron, Tyler, and Divya.". Mark looked for "members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson" but it would have been easier to find the specific people involved instead. And why use failed login attempts if you have access to actual user passwords. I can't think of any reason why you'd log failed passwords but not real ones (except for maliciously stealing passwords).

Finally, how did the email from Elisabeth Theodore to Tim McGinn become public given neither commented on the story. From other parts of the story, it seems likely that Tim McGinn was a source (who else would have known about Mark getting upset with Tim on the phone). So it seems that Tim gave the email to Business Insider however Business Insider does not explicitly state that. This suggests that neither they nor Tim have any real evidence that this "hacking" actually occurred.