Especially that it was a new company deliberately disabling the devices, it sounds like a straightforward criminal CFAA violation. Of course, such laws are really only for persecuting little guys doing uppity things like trying to make scientific knowledge available to the public. Even if you could convince any six-degrees-of-golf-buddies prosecutor to take the case, I'm sure the malicious crackers have some fake contract to hide behind that claims a transferable right to remotely destroy your property.
I wonder if you could take them to small claims court. That's a potentially useful remedy, although pretty much everywhere, if they lose in small claims they can appeal it to regular civil court and make it prohibitively expensive to fight them.
