A California man has pleaded guilty to hacking a Disney employee’s personal computer last year and stealing more than 1 terabyte of confidential data.
Santa Clarita resident Ryan Mitchell Kramer, 25, pleaded guilty to two felony charges, including one count of accessing a computer and obtaining information and one count of threatening to damage a protected computer. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
According to the plea agreement, in early 2024 Kramer posted a computer program on various online platforms that appeared to be used to create AI-generated art, when it really contained a malicious file to gain access to victims’ computers.
Between April and May 2024, a Disney employee downloaded the program, and Kramer gained access to the victim’s personal and work accounts, including a non-public Disney Slack channel. Kramer dowloaded approximately 1.1 terabytes of confidential data from thousands of Disney Slack channels. In July, Kramer contacted the victim by pretending to be a member of a fake Russian hacktivist group called “Nullbulge” and threatned to leak their personal information and Disney Slack data. On July 12, Kramer publicly released the data, including the victim’s bank, medical, and personal information on multiple online platforms. According to the plea deal, at least two other
On July 15, the hack was made public in a report by the Wall Street Journal, and Disney said it was investigating the breach. The FBI is also investigating the hack.
Kramer admitted that he hacked the computers of at least two other victims through his malware. He is expected to make his first appearance in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles in the coming weeks.
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