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A former Disney company’s world was turned upside down when he downloaded an unnatural intelligence-powered image system, aware that it was laced with hacking software, during a large data breach at the entertainment giant.
Matthew Van Andel, an expert at Disney at the time, received a message on the Discord chat forum from an unfamiliar account that appeared to have a personal, detailed knowledge that would only be available if the person had access to his or her workplace Slack chat program.
The attackers said if Van Andel, who alerted Disney to the apparent breach, didn’t agree with their needs, they would relieve scads of his personal details online.
As the expert raced to restore his numerous passwords, the hackers followed through on their danger, releasing data including his Social Security number, his registration credentials to Disney systems, and even dumping information on his children’s Roblox accounts.
” It’s impossible to convey the feeling of contravention”, Van Andel, 42, of La Crescenta, California, The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
After the hack, Van Andel says he didn’t eat or sleep and began having anxiety attacks. Outsiders left him unnerving messages, and jokesters vandalized his social media accounts.
The architect also lost his job at Disney, after a forensic examination of his work-issued system found he had accessed pornography, which he denies.
A larger breach of Disney’s Slack accounts was the subject of the hack on Van Andel, in which a group calling itself Nullbulge shared upwards of a gigabyte of sensitive data, including individual data, computer code, details about unpublished projects, and specifications about Disney technologies and ad campaigns.
Nullbulge, claiming to be a hacktivist collective, reporters at the time it carried out the attack “due to how]Disney ] handles artist contracts, its approach to AI, and its pretty blatant disregard for the consumer”.
Security experts believe that Nullbulge may be a single American who carried out the cyberattack by embedding malicious code into software downloads using a class of malware known as an infostealer.
Van Andel’s family members also question Disney’s claim that the hack was motivated by an ideological grievance.
Van Andel’s sister Christa Maier the Los Angeles Post last year,” They initially started stealing a lot of credit card data and banking information — the normal things.” They then realized where he worked and said,” We can have some additional fun with this.”
They praised him for cooperating with Disney and the authorities to look into the incident.
On a GoFundMe page, the hackers claim that when they made their presence known and attempted to extort our brother for more information, they instead went to the authorities and put his employer, his family, and his reputation in danger. The hacker retaliated by publicly disclosing personal information and making an attempt to act like a model for the next victim so that the next victim would follow their obscene demands.”
Van Andel, who sought a payout from Disney last year due to lost wages and emotional suffering, claimed the hack is still causing people to try to access his private accounts.