Club Penguin Enthusiasts Hack Disney Confluence Server, Swiping 2.5GB of Data: Exclusive Insight

Did you know that Club Penguin fans once hacked a Disney server to find out more about their favorite game but ended up with 2.5 GB of internal corporate data? We’re here to give you the inside scoop on this interesting turn of events.

Club Penguin was a popular multiplayer online game from 2005 to 2018, where players could engage in games, activities, and chat with other players. The game was created by New Horizon Interactive and later bought out by Disney.

Although Club Penguin was officially shut down in 2017 and its successor, Club Penguin Island, in 2018, the game continues to live on in private servers run by fans and independent developers. Disney even pushed back on a more prominent ‘Club Penguin Rewritten’ remake, causing its operators to be arrested. However, private servers continue to exist today, hosting thousands of players.

How Club Penguin fans hacked Disney

One week, an anonymous person uploaded a link to “Internal Club Penguin PDFs” on the 4Chan message board, simply stating, “I no longer need these :).” 

The link led to a 415 MB archive containing 137 PDFs filled with old internal information about Club Penguin, including emails, design schematics, documentation, and character sheets. Although this data is at least seven years old, it’s still fascinating to fans of the game.

What’s even more interesting is that we’ve learned the Club Penguin data is only a small part of a much larger data set stolen from Disney’s Confluence server, which stores documentation for various business, software, and IT projects used internally by Disney.

According to an anonymous source, Disney’s Confluence servers were breached using previously exposed credentials.

The source says that the threat actors were initially looking for Club Penguin data but ended up downloading 2.5 GB of data about Disney’s corporate strategies, advertising plans, Disney+, internal developer tools, business projects, and internal infrastructure.

“Lot more files here including internal api endpoints and credentials for things like S3 buckets,” an anonymous source told us.

The data, which we’ve seen, includes documentation on a wide variety of initiatives and projects, as well as information on internal developer tools named Helios and Communicore, which have not previously been disclosed publicly. 

CommuniCore is a “high-performance asynchronous messaging library, aimed at use in distributed applications.”

Helios is a show authoring and playback tool that allows Disney producers and authors to create interactive non-linear “experiences” using real world inputs from sensors in Disney’s parks.

Scattered across the documents are links to internal websites used by Disney developers, which could be valuable for threat actors who wish to target the company.

While the Club Penguin data is fairly old, the rest of the data circulating on Discord is far newer, with information from 2024.

We were told that the original Club Penguin PDFs shared on 4Chan were stolen weeks ago. However, the Disney corporate data appears to have been downloaded much sooner, as they contain the following text, “Document generated by Confluence on Jun 01, 2024 21:59.”

We contacted Disney multiple times with information and questions about the breach but have yet to receive a reply.

Stay informed and protect your data

This story highlights the importance of staying informed about cybersecurity and taking necessary precautions to protect your data. Whether you’re a fan of Club Penguin or not, it’s crucial to be aware of potential risks and how they can impact individuals and businesses alike.

If you’re interested in learning more about cybersecurity and how to protect yourself, be sure to keep coming back for the latest updates and information. And if you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here to help you stay safe in the digital world.