Crypto consipracy's abound regarding the hack but there's no excuse for the exchange not using proper cold storage techniques, and securing the funds of their users. Poloniex was the target of a hot wallet attack before, and they managed to refund all the money lost to every single user over the course of several months.
http://www.coindesk.com/poloniex-loses-12-3-bitcoins-latest-bitcoin-exchange-hack/
Any exchange that fails to secure the funds of their users is simply negligent and should be held liable. They charge and keep fees from every single trade and withdrawal made on their exchange so they had more than enough to hire security experts.
The "we got hacked, so you're up a creek" argument from large exchanges is getting old real fast. It's as if people learned nothing from the MtGox incident and history is simply dooming those who choose to repeat it.
funnily, I think European Community is about to decide that when a bank will go bankrupt, it will have the possibility to use their customer fund... bitcoin finance is really teaching a bad example ;)
I recently got let into my account, they made up for losses by giving people a brand new coin called BFX which is a dollar backed coin. I am positive they got the idea from steem dollars, but I lost ETH LTC ETC and BTC and replaced with BFX I am not happy about this. My account was not hacked, but they used my currency to cover others losses. I am on Polinex now, but going to work on getting a cold storage wallet after this.