It was a scam. I have been designing and installing embedded devices since 1972. There never was any "danger". The worst that could happen is people's records would be sorted in the wrong order. Very few embedded devices keep time and date. The worst that could happen to something like an elevator is that it would take up a weekend parking station in the middle of the week.
It was a scam compounded by those who wanted to make some money and others who wanted to exercise power over others.
Well that depends what was contained in those sorted records and how they got processed downstream.