Federal investigators are probing an internal program, dubbed "Hell," that Uber used to keep tabs on its leading competitor, Lyft, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

"Uber created fake Lyft customer accounts, tricking Lyft’s system into believing prospective customers were seeking rides in various locations around a city. That allowed Uber to see which Lyft drivers were nearby and what prices they were offering for various routes," the Journal reports. "The program was also used to glean data on drivers who worked for both companies, and whom Uber could target with cash incentives to get them to leave Lyft."

Federal investigators are reportedly probing "whether 'Hell' constituted unauthorized access of a computer"—which is a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the anti-hacking statute Congress passed in 1986.

If the federal government does ultimately charge Uber with criminal computer hacking, it would be a sign of just how broad the controversial law's reach has become. The CFAA was originally passed to prevent people from hacking into other peoples' computers. Uber, in contrast seems to have automated a kind of competitive intelligence-gathering that would have been completely unremarkable if they'd done it manually. Every big company gathers data on competitors' prices and tries to recruit competitors' employees.

But the law really might be against Uber here. A landmark 2016 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court found that a startup called Power Ventures had violated the CFAA when it sent Facebook messages on behalf of Power.com users using their Facebook credentials—and with their permission. The Power Ventures decision essentially established that it's a violation of the CFAA to access the password-protected section of a website or online service in a way that violates the site's terms of service.

As the Journal points out, Uber is now facing three separate federal investigations. In addition to the "Hell" investigation, Uber is also facing scrutiny for creating a special version of its app to mislead local officials trying to enforce tax regulations. The third investigation is considering whether Uber violated anti-bribery laws.