He must be very high functioning
Autism is a very wide spectrum of personality disroders, from the barely noticeable, slightly eccentric to the severely disabling. We aren't all drooling and rocking in a corner, you know, but what we all have in common is diminished ability to take part in social interactions, and perhaps as a way of compensating for this, an ability to concentrate more deeply than most people. Many of us are able to learn how to handle social situations, although I personally have never learned to fully enjoy being around a lot of people. Somewhat counterintuitively, perhaps, I think many with ASD like being the centre of attention when they are in a crowd - it gives you the feeling of being in control of your situation.
About this guy - I can understand easily enough how he can have hacked his way into something sensitive without quite understanding the implications; I have been there myself, in a sense: you do something that shuts out the world and gives you peace, and you know that you have no intentions of causing harm or mischief in any way. And to many autists, it is very hard to see things from somebody else's perspective - I have learned to do it, but some simply don't. My grandson is more severely affected than me, and he fails the following test:
You play with two dolls, who each have a box for keeping things in. One of them has a thing - say, a coin - which they put into their box; they that dolls leaves. The other doll takes the coin out and puts in their own box, and then the first doll comes back. Then you ask the child - where will the first doll look for the coin? An autistic child will tend to point to the box where they have just seen the coin being placed - they have real difficulty understanding that first doll hasn't seen what happened while they were away. It can be learned, but it just doesn't come natural.
I can't see how it makes sense to prosecute or punish a guy like Lauri Love - Firstly, although he can probably understand why it is regarded as a serious transgression, after it has been explained to him with some care, he is unlikely to have realised it in the situation; in that respect he is not dissimilar to those that commit crime while insane, and punishment is not appropriate. Secondly, punishment is meant to be a manifestation of society's "righteous retribution" - we punish the people who commit crime, because we assume they understand what they are doing; they choose to do what they do for selfish reasons and can be justifiably regarded as enemies of common society. In this case, it can't be regarded as righteous, or certainly not by most people, I think, and thus it would bring the law into disrepute.