Maybe you just think in the wrong words. Attack? Why attack? When you are a machine, there is no moral. Accessing data is accessing data. When way 1 is not working, use way 2.
Honestly that part was more surprising to me than anything else, how narrow the compulsion to cheat was: they didn't learn "cheat in general" they learned "think about the grader in great detail and chat exactly as much and exactly in the ways that actually result in a higher score".