A man from California pleaded guilty of hacking the personal computer of a Disney employee last year and stealing more than one teraoctet of confidential data.
Santa Clarita resident Ryan Mitchell Kramer, 25, pleaded guilty to two crime accusations, including a head of access to a computer and obtaining information and a threat leader to harm a protected computer. Each accusation brings a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
According to the advocacy agreement, at the beginning of 2024, Kramer published a computer program on various online platforms which seemed to be used to create art generated by AI, when it really contained a malicious file to access the computers of the victims.
Between April and May 2024, a Disney employee downloaded the program and Kramer had access to the victim’s personal and work accounts, including a non -public Disney Slack channel. Kramer has downloaded approximately 1.1 Teraoctes of confidential data from thousands of Disney Slack channels. In July, Kramer contacted the victim, pretending to be a member of a false Russian hacktivist group called “nullbulge” and threatened to disclose their personal information and his Disney Slack data. On July 12, Kramer publicly published data, including the victim’s bank, medical and personal information on several online platforms.
On July 15, hacking was made public in a report by the Wall Street Journal, and Disney said that he was investigating the violation. The FBI is also investigating the hack.
The disclosed files contained “conversations on the maintenance of the Disney website, the development of software, the assessments of the job candidates, the programs of emerging leaders within the ESPN and the photos of the dogs of the employees, with data reported to 2019”, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“We are happy that this person was charged and has agreed to plead guilty to federal accusations. We remain determined to work closely with the police, as we did in this case, to ensure that cybercriminals are brought to justice,” Disney spokesperson said in a statement.
Kramer admitted having hacked computers of at least two other victims through his malicious software. He should make his first appearance before the United States district court in downtown Los Angeles in the coming weeks.
