I've been in both kinds of cultures: ones where these kinds of shenanigans were common, and ones where, if HR or IT found out, you'd find your key card deactivated, and a box of your things shipped home.
As ridiculous as it sounds to someone in either camp, both were okay.
The former was an organization where everyone fundamentally trusted each other, and the concept of anyone doing anything really wrong was just foreign. It's so dissimilar to most business in tech today (which are either trillion-dollar megacorps, or places where people jump jobs every 3 years). This was an organization where people stuck around for decades, and everyone really knew each other. Doors weren't locked, and everyone had access to everything. It worked well.
The latter is like most of the tech industry today. My machine is private, and if you've hacked my minesweeper, I'm going to reinstall my OS. I don't know you well enough to know you didn't root my machine or steal my personal files. I'm also talking to HR since you shouldn't work here.
I think that's the right way to view it. People are viewing this through the lens of their current employment, but that's assuming a lot. I did something somewhat similar (in type, if not scope) when I was young and in tech support. The notable facts at the time were that a) we were friends, b) the computers were customized by us, but for the most part interchangeable because a web browser was the software needed, which allowed us to install Linux if we wanted, and c) I didn't really hack it as much as use an admin account he gave me to help in do something on his box.
Friendship comes fast when you're in your early 20's and there's lots of free time to screw around. It's twenty years later now, and I probably wouldn't do that to any of my coworkers. I probably would do it to any of my siblings though. How invasive you can get away with a prank being without upsetting the person targeted is largely based on trust.
When I pranked my friend, the company we were at had probably 30 people working for it, and there were maybe 16 of us in tech support total. It's easy to trust others when you're such a small group, because you can actually know most the people you work with. If your company employs even hundreds of people, that's much harder to do.
As ridiculous as it sounds to someone in either camp, both were okay.
The former was an organization where everyone fundamentally trusted each other, and the concept of anyone doing anything really wrong was just foreign. It's so dissimilar to most business in tech today (which are either trillion-dollar megacorps, or places where people jump jobs every 3 years). This was an organization where people stuck around for decades, and everyone really knew each other. Doors weren't locked, and everyone had access to everything. It worked well.
The latter is like most of the tech industry today. My machine is private, and if you've hacked my minesweeper, I'm going to reinstall my OS. I don't know you well enough to know you didn't root my machine or steal my personal files. I'm also talking to HR since you shouldn't work here.