A former Disney employee is being accused of hacking into Disney World’s menu creation software and making changes, including manipulating allergen information.
Mr. Kamal’s Menu
A criminal complaint was filed by the FBI that outlines the accusations against this former employee.
A former Disney World employee, Michael Scheuer, has been accused of hacking into the third-party menu creation software used by Disney World to change the allergy information, add profanity, and change fonts to symbols. Scheuer used to work at Disney as a “Menu Production Manager” and was fired back in June 2024 for misconduct, according to the criminal complaint.
©Disney
The criminal complaint states that Scheuer “knowingly and without authorization caused the transmission of a program, information, code, or command to a protected computer and intentionally caused damage.” Within the complaint, Disney is only referred to as “Company A,” but according to Michael Scheuer’s lawyer, the company mentioned in the complaint is, in fact, Disney.
The Walt Disney Company headquarters in California
The complaint explains how Scheuer accessed the Menu Creator’s servers to change a variety of things, including prices, adding profanity, altering menu QR codes, and changing fonts. Scheuer also made changes that “threatened public health and safety.” The former Disney World employee manipulated the allergen information on the menus to show that some items were safe for those with peanut allergies, even when they were not.
Allergy Menu
As a result of his actions, Disney took the Menu Creator software offline and utilized a manual process for 1-2 weeks. Additionally, Scheuer is accused of conducting attacks to disable the accounts of other Disney employees by “launching denial-of-service attacks against them.” These attacks began on August 29th and affected about 14 Disney employees who were continually locked out of their accounts. From August 29th through October 23rd (the date the criminal complaint was filed), Scheuer attempted more than 100,000 log-ins to these employee’s accounts.
Menu at Les Halles Boulangerie
The complaint noted that Scheuer interacted with several employees, or the employees were part of upper-level management. Disney estimated that Scheuer’s actions cost the company at least $150,000.
Barcelona Lounge menu
Scheuer is being accused of “knowingly causing the transmission of a program, information, code, or command to a protected computer and intentionally causing damage without authorization in excess of $5,000,” and a detention hearing is scheduled for November 5th, according to Forbes.
Auntie Gravity’s Galactic Goodies Menu
David Haas, Scheuer’s lawyer, made a statement to Forbes saying, “The allegations acknowledge that no one was injured or harmed. I look forward to vigorously presenting my client’s side of the story,” and that Scheuer had a “mental disability that caused a panic attack while he was at work.”
Stay tuned to DFB for all your Disney World news.
Our handy (and portable!) ebook guides make sure you get the best deals and can plan a vacation of a lifetime.
I’m sure Disney will manage this fine, but I do hope that part of the cases involves demonstrating that the kind of mental issues that lead people to do malicious things like this are not the kind of mental issues that negate culpability, in the eyes of the legal or mental health professions. But I doubt the case will actually go to court. That absolutely no one was harmed in any way is extremely unlikely, and it didn’t have to be by people ingesting allergens. Disney had to pay employees or contractors who were unable to provide the services that they were being paid to provide. There’s damage. Unless those people were not paid because they couldn’t access their accounts, in which case, he hurt those people. You don’t have to actually physically hurt people in order to be prosecuted, or otherwise we could never do anything about any kind of terrorism until after it happened. Clearly, this is a person who is willing and able to engage in all kinds of misconduct and risk hurting all kinds of people. Too bad Disney didn’t know that before they ever hired him.
If menu items were manipulated to say that they were “safe” for people with allergies, how do we know for sure that no one was hurt??? Exposure to food allergens can be deadly to some people and less harmful to others. For example, I am allergic to the albumen in milk products. As a result, there are quite a number of milk-base products that I cannot eat without experiencing abdominal issues. I am careful NOT to order items that have rich creams and cheeses for that reason and I have dealt with foods this way for all of my life. Nut allergies can be deadly! This person was a “sick” individual and in reading about this case in other areas (I work in the legal field), it appears that he was seeking to exact revenge for his own issues with complying with rules and performance in his job.
Should be up on attempted murder charges. Someone could have died due to these actions.