E-commerce giant Alibaba fired four employees on Tuesday for stealing mooncakes by exploiting program loopholes in an in-house shopping spree.

Alibaba was setting up a platform in its internal system allowing its staff to buy mooncakes at lower prices on Monday as an employee benefit. Four programmers from the company's cyber security department exploited the loopholes of the platform and designed a program to steal 124 boxes of mooncakes.

Alibaba Group fired the four staffers, stating they "violated job responsibilities and broke the credibility red line by using technical measures to cheat."

One of the fired employees later wrote a post explaining he just wanted to buy a box of mooncakes to give to relatives. He said he initially found he could not successfully order the mooncake by simply clicking the button of the platform, because he found there were others using self-developed programs to snap up the purchase. So he also designed a program to place an order.

While he was busy doing other work, he didn't notice his program had ordered 16 boxes of mooncakes. He called the administrative department asking to cancel the orders, but the company soon talked to him and let him go.

The ex-employee said he never thought of selling the mooncakes for profits and denied he had moral problems.

The incident soon sparked heated debate online, with some calling it "a tragedy caused by mooncake." While some criticized the employees' wrong doing, others questioned if it was legitimate for Alibaba to fire people like this.

Han Xiao, a lawyer, said the credibility issue is not the basis for an employer to dismiss employee unilaterally, according to China's Labor Contract Law. "Only when employees severely violated the company's internal disciplines, can a termination happen," he said. "But we don't know Alibaba's internal disciplines."

The mooncake is a must-have delicacy for China's Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on Sept. 15 this year.

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