I think that’s less about “hacking” and more about modern day devs being overworked by their hot-shit team lead and clueless PMs and creating “temporary” solutions that become permanent in the long run.

This bucket was probably something they set up early in the dev cycle so they could iterate components without needing to implement an auth system first and then got rushed into releasing before it could be fixed. That’s almost always how this stuff happens; whether it’s a core element or a rushed DR test.