I don't know every line of code I but I get the big picture.
Evidently not.
It's not the code or the details of the BGS that are particularly relevant here.
An I am still calling Hacks these are very convenient bugs. especially If you were flying for the feds this week.
The Feds had considerably more participants through the entire CG duration. This was entirely foreseeable due to the CG's location, the desirability of the reward (fed rank increase and discount), and CMDR demographics.
The issue Is I flew into the lucent embrace two days ago and the community goal was not present on the mission board. They say bug I think HACKS! That is really the whole conversation.
Could well have been neither. The Feds won well before the CG would have timed out.
I would say what I reported is a fairly big problem. An this crowd is just like meh no big deal.
We're not convinced you even saw anything that wasn't working as intended, let alone evidence of a hack.
Most likely you are misremembering the time you checked the mission board or not accounting for the fact that the game (and generally, forum) time is UTC.
Somewhat less likely, but still rational, was that something went wrong with the mission server.
Well into the insanity level of paranoid improbability was that someone hacked you, or the game's servers, to make sure you could not contribute your CMDR's pittance to an event that already had a foregone conclusion.