When they say one player did this they mean a group of well coordinated players did this. It was done by a group inside goonswarm federation which is the something awful forums in game guild. They are one of the largest and most organized groups in the game and the regularly do stupid shit that tries to break the game. The figured this out almost immediately and racked up enough in game currency that they controlled a sizable portion of the liquid assets in the game. enough that they would be able to bank roll their in game operations for years without worry. This is when they finally publicly revealed what they were doing and the game devs had to step and tell them they could not keep the money. They devs did not figure out what was going on until the guys doing the exploit publicly described how they were doing it on the game forums.

Other shit goonswarm is known for doing is destroying ships in the games safe zones. The game mechanic is that in the safe zones there is NPC police that will kill anyone who attacks another player without consent. But the catch is that the NPC police have a response time that can be gamed. The response time is only a few seconds but a well coordinated attack can destroy a ship within that time. The attacking player still gets killed by the NPC police but they accomplish their suicide kill anyway. The goonswarm offers rewards to players to make it worthwhile to do these suicide attacks on players who sit in the safe zones and just mine resources in expensive ships. Making the safe zones no longer safe. They do this just because they can and they want to watch everything burn.