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Nobody is talking about "hammering a website with thousands of requests per second with the intent of taking it down." They're flooding an application process so that Kellogg HR can't find any real people in the giant pile of fake applications. Taking the website down is not a goal.

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Both are attacks on availability in an IT context which is what makes it illegal. The goal is to cost the company money by reducing their ability to use recruiting systems, which is rather analogous to taking down a website in the eyes of the law.

What do you mean by "in an IT context?" The limit of the "IT" part of this is submitting the application online. There is no further technical piece, and I can't help drawing a parallel between you saying this is illegal because it's "in an IT context" and similarly ridiculous things like patenting already-patented processes but "on a computer."

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