Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're going overboard on what's required. Take anybody who is simultaneously offered a substantial monetary incentive (let's say 4 years of total current/vesting comp), and also threatened with the release of something that we'll say is little more than moderately embarrassing. And this dev is being asked to do something that stands basically 0 risks of consequences/exposure for himself due to plausible deni…
This doesn't look intentional at all, because this is basically like how 90% of memory disclosure bugs look
I suppose the point is that even though any given instance of an error like this is overwhelmingly likely to be an innocent mistake, there is some significant probability that one or two such instances were introduced deliberately with plausible deniability. Although this amounts to little more than the claim that "sneaky people might be doing shady things, for all we know", which is true in most walks of life.