[LikelyABurner]

IANAL but this is textbook unauthorized access of a computer as has been drilled into me in every boring corporate training I do for my security work and thus is "hacking".

Telling the judge "but I wasn't wearing my black hoodie while listening to K-pop while doing it!" is going to be about as effective as telling the judge the legal code can't be trusted because it's not backed by a CI/CD system adhering to Agile practices. (Which a non-trivial number of Hacker News posters probably think would work.)