ORLANDO, Fla. (WFLA) — A former Walt Disney World employee is accused of hacking the theme park’s menu system to manipulate their menus, according to a federal criminal complaint.
On July 9, Disney was made aware of one of their former employees, Michael Scheuer, of accessing their menu system following his termination for misconduct.
When Scheuer worked for Disney as a “Menu Product Manager,” his job was to create and publish menus.
The system, Menu Creator, is a company that creates menus to distribute to Disney-owned restaurants and includes several functionalities like pricing, menu management, and inventory management, the complaint said. Disney is the only user of the Menu Creator product.
The complaint said that over the course of three months, Scheuer manipulated the menus, including changing prices, adding profanity, and altering the allergen information.
Scheuer is also accused of conducting attacks aimed at disabling accounts by launching denial-of-service attacks against them. He used a specific VPN that hides browsing activity, identity, and location to hack into the system— all of which were discovered on his personal laptops.
On Sept. 23, the FBI searched his home, to which he claimed Disney World was trying to frame him because they were “worried about him” and the conditions under which he was fired.
According to Walt Disney World, the estimated cost of damage from Scheuer’s actions is at least $150,000. The complaint mentioned that he attempted over 100,000 logins to the server accounts to hack the menu system.
Scheuer attacked 14 total employee accounts during his hacking scheme, all who he had some type of previous interaction with, and who were upper-level managers for Disney. The attacks were believed to be carried out from June 12 through Sept. 23.