Fired Disney Employee Gets 3 Years in Prison For Hacking and Changing Menus (cnn.com) 53
A former Disney employee who hacked into the company's servers to alter its restaurant menus, including falsifying allergen information and printing profane language, has been sentenced to three years in prison. From a report: Michael Scheuer, a Florida resident, was sentenced last week in federal court and ordered to pay nearly $690,000 in restitution, with most of that going to Disney. He pled guilty in January to one count of computer fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
"Scheuer remains remorseful and apologetic to his former co-workers. We are grateful that the judge heard all of our arguments and mitigation when fashioning a sentence that was half of what the government was seeking," said David Haas, Scheuer's lawyer, in a statement to CNN.
Scheuer worked as a menu production manager for Disney and was fired last June for misconduct, according to the original complaint. He had access to, and also used, secure internal servers for creating and publishing menus for all of Disney's restaurants as part of his job at the company.
"Scheuer remains remorseful and apologetic to his former co-workers. We are grateful that the judge heard all of our arguments and mitigation when fashioning a sentence that was half of what the government was seeking," said David Haas, Scheuer's lawyer, in a statement to CNN.
Scheuer worked as a menu production manager for Disney and was fired last June for misconduct, according to the original complaint. He had access to, and also used, secure internal servers for creating and publishing menus for all of Disney's restaurants as part of his job at the company.
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Re: Incel? (Score:2)
basura (Score:2)
No sympathy for the guy or Disney.
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Re:basura (Score:5, Funny)
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Disney would have been fine, assuming the patrons had agreed to the EULA for a trial of Disney+
I king of assumed that his "hacking" (that word sounds like a stretch to me, from the description) was in response to that, and that he was trying to make a statement about how wrong Disney's behavior was.
Re: basura; people aren't trash. (Score:2)
Looking at the pattern of attack it does appear to be the result of a mental health issue that should have been handled better before it got to this point.
I'm not saying I approve of his actions, but his employer has some culpability in this. Specifically in using shared password
I see nothing wrong with this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Could have killed somebody.
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Clearly a dumbass move. Made it certain someone was going to be injured by his actions: which would obviously lead to an immediate full-scale investigation. Did they somehow expect to get through such investigation without being identified?
What could that employee have possibly thought the outcome of their tampering would be?
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I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. In fact given that the idea is obviously stupid, it must have *really* felt like the right thing. The only thing that could get a remotely normal human being to do something that stupid is self-righteousness on an epic scale.
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3 years in prison seems fine to me given people could have died due to his altered allergy advice. The fine seems pointless as he almost certainly won't be able to pay it now or possibly ever.
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3 years in prison seems fine to me given people could have died due to his altered allergy advice. The fine seems pointless as he almost certainly won't be able to pay it now or possibly ever.
To be fair, people could die by being sent to a prison in a foreign country where gangs are threatening their lives (specifically, as individuals), too. And it's probably a lot more likely than someone with a peanut allergy not realizing that something contains peanuts, or a change to allergen information not being noticed and reverted before a menu goes to the printers.
So if this gets 3 years, how many years should that get?
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Re: Seems a bit harsh (Score:2)
"wolverines claws"
Your incel is showing.
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I have. It's a somewhat less than fun experience. I learned two things: firstly, going to the desk and screaming "anaphylaxis!" while waving a dying kid around is a really, really good way to skip any queue that might exist. Secondly...you do not want to ever be in a positi
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Seems like you have had to do that. And I am sorry this happened to you.
Sometimes life sucks...
Be strong!
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That whole experience was truly something else. We had no idea the
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We had no idea they had an allergy
I am sorry you had this very scary experience...but if you didn't know the child had an allergy, how would having allergens listed on the menu be helpful?
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That's what I meant.
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He should have been charged with attempted murder. He can't possibly have been unaware he was endangering lives, so killing someone was obviously his intent.
Life in prison is too lenient.
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They are extremely lucky no-one died. It is very, very serious
From what I understand, the menus were never put into production and were never used. Also, menus should never be the exclusive source of protection for individuals with severe peanut allergies. A source, yes, but THE source, never. Menus are often outsourced and errors are common. For example, those with severe allergies would likely also verify peanut & allergy information with the server & the kitchen, and would carry an epi-pen, and would take a look at food itself carefully before eating (in ca
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I stand chastised - my apologies.
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Yeah, the guy was a dick and arguably put people's lives at risk by altering the allergy info on the menus. I expect a strong disincentive to this kind of behaviour; but nearly a million in fines and three years in prison seems a bit harsh.
$690K isn't nearly a million dollars, and let's not forget, along the way he broke the menu system, which likely cost Disney serious money to repair, and I suspect the court imposed treble-damages (3x the cost to recover what he damaged) - I don't think the court just "made up a number"
That seems especially true in the context of an administration which gets away with sending an innocent man to a Salvadoran concentration camp [wikipedia.org], then defies a Supreme Court order to bring him back.
"Innocent man"?
He went trough his due process and was found to be in the country illegally, was twice found by two different immigration court judges to be a member of MS-13, and only when he argued that he fled to America be
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He went trough his due process and was found to be in the country illegally, was twice found by two different immigration court judges to be a member of MS-13, and only when he argued that he fled to America because an El Salvadoran gang was harassing his moms app USA shop and rather than help her, he fled the country and left her behind to face the local gang alone, so a judge said "OK, we won't deport you back to El Salvador" then the world changed over the course of 9 years and he was deported back to his native country, El Salvador.
Citation, please?
According to Wikipedia, his family sent him to the United States at age 16. As a minor. That right there very seriously contradicts your spin. At 16, you don't choose to leave the country. Your parents *send* you out of the country.
Also, no court actually ruled that he was a gang member. A court ruled that the government's hearsay evidence — someone said he was a gang member — was adequate reason to not let him post bail to be released from jail pending trial. There's a ra
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He was originally sent to a high security prison, and was soon moved to a lower security prison, where he has his own room and furniture
So you're okay with essentially a lifetime sentence in an El Salvadorian prison for the crime of...entering the U.S. as a child? I believe the U.S. Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment," does it not? Even if he was a member of a gang, that by itself does not justify a lifetime in a prison without due process and an opportunity to have your case heard in front of a jury. The government admitted he was sent there in error, and is now doing nothing at all to try to correct their error. (There's
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Are you really arguing that: A) Parents with citizen children can't be deported? B) Parents shouldn't be allowed to keep their child with them? C) Sick children can't leave the country?
Legally, yes, a person who has a citizen child can be deported. However, I see it as morally wrong as it causes harm to the child and violates their rights as a citizen of the U.S. Separating a child from their parents is a violation of the child's rights, and there's no guarantee that the country to which the child is being deported (well, since they are a citizen it isn't deportation, it is "exile") will accept the child or will allow them to stay, or work, or even go to school.
Similarly, deporting the p
Re: Seems a bit harsh (Score:2)
The amount was probably based on the equity in his home so his wife and three children can suffer for daddy's mental health meltdown so we can repeat the cycle in the next generation.
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Yeah, the guy was a dick
A dick? That's it?
Imagine you go to a restaurant with your peanut-allergic child, and you ask the waiter if the dish your child ordered had peanuts in it, and the waiter said "Nope, no peanuts in that dish". So the food comes, your child starts to eat, has a reaction, and you jab them with an Epi Pen to save their life.
Is the waiter really just a "dick"?
Now, multiply that one example across thousands of resort guests that visit Disney with children with allergies every day and rely on the guidance in those
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A dick? That's it?
It would have been funny, though, if he just listed "dick" as one of the main ingredients in some of the food.
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I thought that he did kill someone. There was a lawsuit that Disney tried to force to arbitration over a streaming service clause because a widowed party was suing over the death of the spouse because of food allergens in a Disney park restaurant.
Re: Hero of Resistance vs the Oligarch Mouse! (Score:1)
They can genocide you all they want.
hacking for doing something that is part of his jo (Score:2)
hacking for doing something that is part of his job at the company?
at least they should get off for the hacking part but do hard time for other stuff.
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He attacked the menu system after being fired, you know, an act of revenge.
Well, there's your problem .... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're gonna fire somebody, you gotta change their passwords or lock their accounts. That's elementary. The definition of "hacked into" also seems to have expanded considerably over the years.
Here's another problem, as reported by CNN [cnn.com]: "'This change was so substantial that it caused the Menu Creator system to become inoperable while the font changes were made to all of the menus,' the complaint said. Disney was also 'forced to take the Menu Creator application offline while they reverted to backups to regain the ability to operate.'"
Really? Seems like an awfully fragile system. They had to restore from backups to fix the font? Was the change too big for the system to handle?
"Additionally, Scheuer allegedly ... locked at least 14 Disney employees out of their accounts by continually attempting to log on to their accounts with incorrect passwords." Did those 14 accounts include the only administrator able to reset locked accounts?
Wouldn't want to blame the victims here, but there seems to have been some contributory negligence. On the other hand, if everything had worked properly, it wouldn't be news.
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It was probably web based. Just forcing user fonts would fix it or right-clicking and editing the view in developer mode.
As a stupid kid, I would go into all the computers on display at Walmart and change things around but then make the default font the same color as the grey application windows so they couldn't read to fix it.
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Wouldn't want to blame the victims here,
Then why are you? No amount of negligence on Disney's part in any way lessons his crime. He tried to kill people, and only luck kept him from succeeding.
Re: Well, there's your problem .... (Score:2)
Don't mess with the Mouse!! (Score:2)
ha ha!
take out a knee...
ha ha!
sorry don't know how to write out Mickeys' laugh...
But not the park patrons? (Score:2)
"Scheuer remains remorseful and apologetic to his former co-workers."
What? He feels bad he made extra work for his former fellow employees? That's it? It doesn't sound like he doesn't really appreciate the impact his actions could have had for countless children across all the Disney properties...