Yes, the poorly written code allowed them to LEGALLY get the coins. This is not a hack, just poor coding. Eth can NOT recover from this. Tarnished forever.
I couldn't agree more. It's a long term zero whose short term scandal and investigation - there will be an investigation - is going to hurt Altcoins in general, perhaps even hastening the ultimate demise of many.
It isn't "tarnished forever" if the problem is confined to where it originated. That was the whole point of a "Turing Complete" scripting language - to isolate one contract from another and from the underlying platform itself as I've
explained here and in previous posts in that thread.