So I write you a letter asking for information and you accidentally copy me your notes on how to gather the information in your response. Nothing illegal is happening when I read your notes. Maybe I should not read them for ethical reasons, but it's not illegal.

This only applies if you were reading the code, not executing any code on the remote system (which I thought you were doing). It sounds like you were doing something different.

Either way, I still think you're in the wrong, kind of like checking out a naked person getting changed because they accidentally left their blind open. It was available, maybe it was clever, but it's a strange way to learn how to code. Why didn't you just buy a coding book, or borrow some from the library ? Was the code really of good quality if the server was configured so badly?

Obviously we have a difference of opinion and that's ok.

The issue as described by the original poster was that the code was not executed but displayed. They read it and understood how it works. This set them on a trajectory to try it themselves. This is how they started. Maybe a book was involved at a later stage.

Sure, you can argue that they were not supposed to read the code, so they shouldn't have. But without some tangible harm I don't see why we're supposed to disapprove of it. Maybe allow some hacker spirit while posting on Hacker News :-)

I’ve done similar things in the past so I said I’m not judging them, but after some time working with computers myself I’ve become more compassionate and I think the better thing to do is help a fellow sys admin and report the problem. That’s the hacker spirit.