Early in the morning of July 7th, Disneyland’s official Facebook and Instagram made posts containing racist and homophobic slurs. All four of the posts were made around 4:30am, and were quickly removed. Of course not before many people saw them and took screen shots. It also appears the posts were also added to Instagram stories, but those were also swiftly taken down.
“Disneyland Resort’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were compromised early this morning,” the company said in a statement. “We worked quickly to remove the reprehensible content, secure our accounts, and our security teams are conducting an investigation.”
These posts were made by a self described “super hacker,” known as David Do. We know it was Do because he not only signed posts with his name, he also posted images of himself along with the inflammatory comments.
In one of the Instagram posts he said his motivation for the attack was in retaliation. He claims that Disney employees were mocking him “for having a small penis.” And if that obvious troll wasn’t obvious enough, Do also claimed credit for inventing Covid. Even threatening to release a new deadly strain of the virus.
These comments also contained homophobic slurs along with several uses of the N-word. Not to mention some slur-laden memes to top it all off.
Disneyland’s official Instagram account has 8.4 million followers. The official Facebook page has over 16 million fans. The details are still unclear as to how Do gained access to begin with. Since the posts just appeared on Facebook and Instagram, it’s possible he gained access to Instagram and used the built-in feature to automatically post to Facebook as well.
This should be a reminder to everyone that even large companies like Disney can still be vulnerable to their accounts being hijacked.
