Well there's a couple problems here: 1) Let's say their excuse is bogus. So what where they doing? Gaming the system like ltgenpanda claims? There's a contrad

Well there's a couple problems here: 1) Let's say their excuse is bogus. So what where they doing? Gaming the system like ltgenpanda claims? There's a contradiction there though. On the one hand you're saying that you don't buy it's testing because they're too smart and too capable to test on production... ...and on the other hand you believe they have to resort to this roundabout way of gaming their own system because they are not capable and smart enough to just do it a more direct way. 2) Your assumption (that they could do it in a test environment) is not necessarily true. If their explanation is to be believed, the testing is not the same as say normal software testing. The intent is to be a realistic security test...more like a "pen test"...which are quite often done on production machines. So far I haven't seen anything that contradicts their explanation, and indeed it fits the facts as we know them pretty well, while the "game theory" doesn't. Maybe some more conclusive info will come out.