Admittedly I haven't been following this story, but now that I see it on HN, am genuinely curious whether they were able to rule out that hardware is involved?

Admittedly I haven't been following this story, but now that I see it on HN, am genuinely curious whether they were able to rule out that hardware is involved? Also curious to know if perhaps there are flaws in the image format's spec that are being exploited?