It absolutely was sincere. I'm not sure why you think they are "diametrically opposed". In both cases it is victim blaming.
If you have a really nice sports car and I open the hood to see what engine it has and how it works, yes, I am in the wrong for not asking your permission first. However, if you then try to sue me for $100k because you claim that you had to have expensive maintenance done, you had to get the entire car diagnosed and $20k of repair done, etc. then you are clearly responding in an inappropriate manner.
That's what the whole "NASA had to shut it's systems down for 3 weeks at the cost of $41000 to check and fix it's systems" is about.
I hope you see now how that is very much different from the "she was asking for it" kind of BS.
I can easily see how such work can take, for multiple systems, several weeks and 41K is not an outrageous sum for completely recreating the system. Especially when something controlling life-preserving equipment is involved - which means additional testing, etc. - it's not a website that you can just push into production and if some page glitches the user would tell you.