Several hacks/exploits, yes, do take advantage of lua in /data
However, we're not going to rewrite ULib to use any of those hacks because of reason 1... Lua shouldn't be run from data; it doesn't make sense.
And back to reason #2... though we could, as soon as we did... Garry would block it again like he's blocked execution from so many other folders.
The path exists because of Garry's 'lua should only be run from /lua' program model