These analogies are not helping. Here's what actually happened: the accused allegedly sent requests to a web server asking "may I please look at the document with id X?" for various values of X. Each time the web server had the option to say "no, you may not", or even "no, that document doesn't exist." Instead, it responded each time by sending the requested document.
That's all that happened: someone used HTTP in the way it's intended to be used, and inferred quite reasonably that the people who set up that web server knew what they were doing and meant to set it up that way. It turns out those people didn't know what they were doing, and they got embarrassed about it.
That's all that happened: someone used HTTP in the way it's intended to be used, and inferred quite reasonably that the people who set up that web server knew what they were doing and meant to set it up that way. It turns out those people didn't know what they were doing, and they got embarrassed about it.