Cat product service provider KitNipBox sued rival Meowbox in federal court in Washington alleging that Meowbox hacked into KitNipBox’s website to steal its trade secrets and confidential information and to disrupt its business.
According to the allegations, on March 14, 2016, the Chief Technology Officer of Meowbox, with the support and knowledge of Meowbox’s CEO, executed a malicious script on KitNipBox’s website, which ran for 40 minutes.
During the run, which included a denial of service attack, Meowbox allegedly was able to access and add the email addresses of 8,000 current and former subscribers of KitNipBox to Meowbox’s database. The script run also allegedly caused KitNipBox’s emails to be placed into its customers’ spam folders, which caused KitNipBox damage. The complaint alleges that running the script was a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as well as infringement of trade secrets, unfair competition, unjust enrichment, tortious interference and civil conspiracy.