A California man who used the alias “NullBulge” has pleaded responsible to illegally accessing Disney’s inner Slack channels and stealing over 1.1 terabytes of inner firm knowledge.
In response to the U.S. Division of Justice, a 25-year-old named Ryan Kramer created a trojan horse in early 2024 that was promoted as an AI picture era instrument on GitHub and different platforms.
Nevertheless, the DOJ says this program was truly malware that allowed Kramer to entry the pc of those that put in it to steal knowledge and passwords from the gadget.
In response to the Wall Avenue Journal, one of many individuals who downloaded this system was a Disney worker, Matthew Van Andel, who executed it on his pc. This gave Kramer entry to his gadget, together with the passwords saved in his 1Password password supervisor.
Utilizing Van Andel’s stolen credentials, Kramer gained entry to Disney’s Slack channels, the place he downloaded 1.1TB of company knowledge.
“By accessing M.V.’s Disney Slack account, defendant gained entry to personal Disney Slack channels, and in or round Could 2024, defendant downloaded roughly 1.1 terabytes of confidential knowledge from 1000’s of Disney Slack channels,” reads a plea settlement seen by BleepingComputer.
The Division of Justice says that Kramer then contacted Van Andel, posing as a Russian hacktivist group referred to as “NullBulge,” warning that his private info and Disney’s stolen Slack knowledge could be printed if he did not cooperate.
After receiving no response, NullBulge posted a message on the BreachForums hacking discussion board on July 12, 2024, titled “DISNEY INTERNAL SLACK,” the place he claimed to have breached Disney and leaked the 1.1TB of stolen knowledge, together with Van Andel’s private data.
“1.1TiB of knowledge. virtually 10,000 channels, each message and file attainable, dumped. Unreleased tasks, uncooked photos and code, some logins, hyperlinks to inner api/ internet pages, and extra! Have enjoyable sifting by means of it, there’s a lot there,” reads the discussion board publish.

Supply: BleepingComputer
Kramer has pleaded responsible to at least one depend of accessing a pc and acquiring info and one depend of threatening to break a protected pc. Every cost carries a statutory most sentence of 5 years in federal jail.
He has additionally confirmed that two extra individuals downloaded his malware, permitting him to achieve entry to their computer systems. The FBI is at the moment investigating these extra individuals.
His preliminary courtroom look in Los Angeles federal courtroom is predicted to be within the coming weeks.