Former Disney employee accused of hacking software to modify food allergies

Getting fired is definitely an unpleasant experience, and not everyone takes it particularly well. Example: A federal criminal complaint accuses one former Disney employee of hacking the software that created the food and beverage menus at the company’s resorts. The government says these attacks even went so far as to dangerously alter the allergen information on menus.

The complaintfiled by the Justice Department alleges that former employee Michael Scheuer committed a series of computer crimes after being fired from the company. The injured company is not named in the complaint, it is listed only as “Company A”. However, 404 media reports that The resort in question is Disney, citing confirmation from an attorney representing the former employee. Gizmodo has reached out to Disney for comment.

In his role at Disney, Scheuer was “responsible for the creation and publication of menus for the entire restaurant portfolio,” according to the complaint. The software in question, called Menu Creator, was developed by a third party for the exclusive use of Disney, according to 404. Through his role, Scheuer had “deep knowledge of … (the Menu Creator software’s) system architecture, menu processing workflow, and potential vulnerabilities in system”.

The complaint alleges that Scheuer was fired for “misbehavior” and described his termination as “contentious and not considered amicable.”

The attacks on the company took place over a three-month period during which Scheuer “manipulated the menus of Disney owned and operated restaurants,” the complaint said. The more “benign” of these attacks involved corrupting various menus by changing their font to Wingdings, thus making them inconsistent. On other occasions, Scheuer allegedly inserted profanity into the menu. Meanwhile, the more serious offenses involved Scheuer’s attempts to manipulate the allergen information on the menu. Scheuer is also accused of conducting denial-of-service attacks on the work accounts of several of his former colleagues.

David Haas, Scheuer’s attorney, told Gizmodo via email:

The criminal pleadings acknowledge that no one was harmed or harmed as a result of any changes to the menu. Mr. Scheuer has a disability that has affected his work at Disney. He had a medical situation that led to the suspension. Disney then did not respond to his inquiries about why he was suspended, and then his suspension was inexplicably changed to a dismissal. Disney declined to answer why he was fired and did not make any accommodations for him. He subsequently filed a complaint with the EEOC. I look forward to energetically presenting my client’s side of the story.

Surprisingly enough, Disney has been impressed recently wrongful death lawsuit. after a woman died while dining at a restaurant that operated on the grounds of one of the Disney properties in Florida. A woman and her husband were wrongly told by a waiter that the dish she ordered could be prepared without dairy or nuts. The case became widely publicized after Disney attempted to have the case dismissed based on a mandatory arbitration clause in the couple’s Disney+ trial subscription. After much outrage, Disney announced that it would abandon its crude legal strategy file a lawsuit in court.

However, this case is unrelated to the one involving Scheuer. Although Scheuer changed the allergen information on restaurant menus, those menus were never actually distributed to the establishments in question.