The CV of Thomas Vidick, one of the two people that found the bug, is quite impressive. Undergrad at ENS in France (ranked 1st), PhD at Berkeley (3.97/4.0), postdoc at MIT under Scott Aaronson, and now full professor at Caltech. He literally wrote a book on the topic (Introduction to Quantum Cryptography). So, yeah.
The other person to find the bug is currently a PhD student, which is more impressive. They beat all the other experts reading the paper.
A second year PhD student no less! He did his undergrad at Tsinghua and is doing a PhD at Berkeley.
For context, as far as I am aware, ENS is the most prestigious non-engineering institute in France and is known for its extreme rigor. And l’X is the top engineering institute.
Someone more familiar can correct me if I am wrong.
Thomas is indeed a beast - he was considered one of the smartest profs in the department when I was doing my PhD at Caltech. Just FYI, he left Caltech and moved to Israel a few years ago.
They have spent thousands, if not tens of thousands, of hours building this skill set. It's like saying "I find it amazing that someone can play Scriabin's piano sonata no. 5 perfectly".