Debugging is useful to see whether exhaustion is working as it should and why you are becoming exhausted.
Otherwise, if an effect is deliberately programmed in, it is not an exploit. An exploit is misusing an effect for how it isn't intended (the debugger). Or taking advantage of a bug or system limitation to do things your PC shouldn't be able to (such as the encumbered strafing described earlier).
Exhaustion would be continuous, but do you really want the server to be weighed down by that kind of check? So it checks periodically. And if your PC rests for one second, then that's not really sufficient rest to get rid of exhaustion.