This is wild speculation, but the fact that neither the researchers nor the department head would give a comment makes me think that the blowback did result in an ongoing ethics investigation.
The one they’re catching is dumb college kids who kept records and threw up their hands when caught. Quote from the article “this hack is a long time coming”. The kernel maintainers were mad because they were being experimented on, not because it was coming from the state university systems that have histories of surveillance state collaboration.
Don’t assume using foss makes you safe.
It was just a prank bro!
the paper hit a number of nerves among a very passionate (and very online) community
Oh. No.