Back in the day ... Steemit fork 1,2,or 3, a similar "random" number algorythm was exploited such that an individual with 20-30 alt accounts managed to maintain 18-19 some of the top 20 witness rankings for weeks.

When @dan and @ned found it, they provided the individual with even more steem (than already amassed) to provide them with the explanation of the exploit. Congratulated the individual. They then forked to fix the hole.

@mys took advantage of a weakness in the code, but in this realm that is not a crime ... (it is being a dick though) however, I'll be curious to see what he does with the "winnings". This could quickly end his bid to ever be a top ranking witness.

If @mys returned all the winnings with a memo stating "fix the code - look at how smart I was to do what I did", he would win some respect in the eyes of many steemians.

Here's the link to one of the better explanations on that "hack"

https://steemit.com/steem/@arhag/how-supercomputing-was-able-to-dominate-the-mining-queue-and-how-the-bug-was-fixed

EDIT: I used strike through to correct what I remembered happening versus what really happened as explained in @arhag's post.