A former Disney employee is being accused of hacking into Disney World’s menu creation software and making changes, including manipulating allergen information.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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