That doesn't sound too different from finding and exploiting a bug in an online bank.
If e.g. someone found a way to log in as other users, that would reflect poorly on the bank's security, but it wouldn't entitle them to withdraw all the money they could access, even through "a sequence of buttons that they were legally entitled to push."
I think categorizing it as hacking makes sense in that light. The issue seems to be that the current laws treat hacking as an exotic crime with federal scope, which makes the legal cases a bit quirky.
If e.g. someone found a way to log in as other users, that would reflect poorly on the bank's security, but it wouldn't entitle them to withdraw all the money they could access, even through "a sequence of buttons that they were legally entitled to push."
I think categorizing it as hacking makes sense in that light. The issue seems to be that the current laws treat hacking as an exotic crime with federal scope, which makes the legal cases a bit quirky.