[jesusthatsgreat]

If you see an ATM churning out free cash, do you take it and say nothing? You are after all profiting on someone elses mistake...

It's the same situation. Taking money that is not yours is a punishable crime. It's that simple.

[ejb999]

Is it though the same thing? obviously taking cash spewing out of an ATM is illegal - but I honestly not sure if this is the same thing.

I am thinking more along the lines (made up example), you studied the trading in certain stocks and figured out a pattern where big investors were always buying huge blocks of stock XYZ right before the close, and so the price went up - if you picked up on that, and then front-ran those trades and then sold them back to the big buyer while they are buying at the close - you are not doing anything illegal - you are exploiting inefficiencies in the system (and making a pile of dough.)

Not a perfect analogy I know - Just trying to understand where this 'hack' falls on that spectrum of exploiting inefficiencies vs sticking a gun in someones face.

[bombcar]

The law takes intent into play - a case of note was https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/business/citibank-revlon-... - the ruling basically said "normally, this would be a reversible mistake, but the particulars indicate it wouldn't be".

The fact that the "owners" of the code fixed the code before it was exploited would come down heavily on the "illegal/fraud" side of things if it were litigated. If, however, they knew about it, and there were cases of it being done, and explicitly did nothing it possibly could be argued to be intentional.

[danielvf]

This hack was by defeating access controls - it at least can't argue that it was just good trading.