The Walt Disney Company is facing a large class action lawsuit over the massive data breach the company suffered in July when more that 1.1TB of its customers’ private data was stolen by hackers.
The suit was filed on October 3 in Los Angeles Superior Court by Scott Margel against Disney and Disney California Adventure, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The paper notes that thousands of Disney and former Disney customers have signed onto the suit, all of whom are charging Disney with responsibility for losing their “highly sensitive personal information.”
The breach occurred after the Russia-based hacktivist group “Nullbulge” found a way to access Disney’s Slack, its internal employee communication and workflow system, which then gave the hacktivist group access to the data. The group reportedly also gained access to Disney’s Cruise Line information which contained the passport numbers, and other personal details of cruise crew members.
Customers also say Disney has not told them about the full extent of the breach and they simply don’t know how much of their personal information was taken.
Other information stolen by the hackers include granular revenue details about Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu, the Wall Street Journal reported in July.
The Hollywood Reporter writes that the “leaked information includes a trove of internal communications from Disney, images, logins, studio information, ad campaigns and other information, almost all appearing to be from the Salesforce-owned communications platform Slack.”
The hacking incident could not have come at a worse time for Disney as the entertainment giant has been undergoing round after round of layoffs and consolidation or elimination departments and branches. Just last month hundreds of corporate employees found their jobs on the chopping block
The company has also experienced stiff rounds of revenue loss. Things are so bad for the company’s theme parks that Disney shares were downgraded on news of loses at its parks couple with its still struggling streaming service.
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