This is messed up. Messing with allergen info can kill people.
But using your credentials is not hacking. Disney should have revoke the access and it probably would have prevented it. But I suppose we can’t expect a billion dollar company to have good process and procedures.
“The complaint alleges he did this soon after being fired by Disney using passwords that he still had access to on several different systems.“
Using your credentials is not hacking, but once he was canned he no longer had authorization to access those systems. Legally, there is probably no distinction between gaining access by actual hacking vs. using credentials that are no longer authorized.
So yes, their IT processes are deficient, but that doesn't let the guy off the hook or mitigate his punishment.
Yeah, the proper time to revoke credentials is before they even know they're getting fired. At all the places I worked, the first sign that someone was getting fired would be that they're suddenly unable to access anything.
It's likely that HIS credentials were revoked, but anyone in IT will tell you there many systems which are accessed by a shared direct username/password login, and yes while that should be changed when needed a much easier solution would be to lock those apps/sites behind a VPN which is much easier to revoke access to.
IT systems need a way to pre-enter an account deactivation, and when HR sends a text to the system it makes it live, or something. I've been the IT guy who was told to disable an account, and the user found out before the news was broken so they asked me what was going on. No bueno.
This was my first thought too. Interestingly that death occurred October 2023, while this particular fired employee is accused of accessing Disney's menu systems around June-September 2024.
Almost like this ex-employee saw the news earlier and was then inspired to try to murder someone with bad allergen info.
changed allergy information on menus to say that foods that had peanuts in them were safe for people with allergies, added profanity to menus, and at one point changed all fonts used on menus to Wingdings
These 3 things are on so different levels of damage.
I wonder if somebody just made up one of them... or another person added one afterwards.
Two of those are wacky japes, one of them is attempted something in the somethingth degree. Wasn't long ago someone did actually die in a Disney park due to nut allergies.
Or the employee was an allergy denialist. I know many people like that, and at least one almost killled a person, for the sole reason of some people claiming to ge gluten intolerant because of their health guru saw some people losing weight due to their primary carb source became expensive (it had a weird positive side effect of such item being more available, although early on some of such items secretly contained gluten).
A while back a woman died after eating at a Disney restaurant and being assured that the food she was ordering was allergen free. Disney responded very poorly to the husband's suit, but I wonder if the Disney employee believed things were allergen free because of one of these hacked menus.
This is exactly what Disney is trying to do by throwing an ex employee under the bus.
If people's lives depend on your systems, and your systems can be undermined by a single person and not caught for years, then you're playing with people's lives.
Secondly, even if this was the case, how could they possibly justify trying to get out of being accountable by saying she signed away her rights by using a free month of Disney+?
This is just Disney moving on to their next bullshit excuse to not pay after the first one didn't work.