I read it more as being a mistake on Oracle's part and van Zyl expecting some kind of quid pro quo to fix it. I don't think van Zyl actually caused this or anything. It seems to me to be more indicative of van Zyl being an opportunist trying to get something out of fixing a mistake. After all, if this were some kind of diabolical plot, you'd imagine that van Zyl would ask for more than the location of some servers.

UPDATE: According to tweets in another comment, I'm wrong and van Zyl did cause this. I'm still inclined to attribute this to incompetence rather than malice though.