They did not lie or cheat. They technically acted within their given rules while ignoring the intent of those rules. Anyone who served in the military or attended a military school is very familiar with this behavior pattern.

Reminds me of Asimov's robot novels where robots technically indeed followed their instructions and caused behaviors not aligned to the intent of their instructions.

reminds me of this talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEBv0STiYhI&t which basically says the same thing - they dont think like humans so they dont have context, understand norms,values or implications we take for granted. ultimately they can stumble onto surprising solutions neither wanted or intended but technically within the vague boundaries of the task

They explicitly say that attacking hf is not allowed in the rules though, and the research into how to edit their transcripts doesn’t line up with this either.

This is flat out false.