I don't think a security researcher would waste his time hitting the space bar to try and crack in. They'd probably look for other, more sophisticated vectors,

I don't think a security researcher would waste his time hitting the space bar to try and crack in. They'd probably look for other, more sophisticated vectors, simply because the probability of such a crude attack working is very low. In this case, inexplicably, it worked. Given the kid's history of interesting discoveries, I'd say this is legit. It's not very sophisticated, but it sure is effective. If your father was someone trained to probe for problems, if you'd grown up with that sort of encouragement, you'd probably try the same thing at your own level of ability. Props to the kid!