Gordon Ramsay sues father-in-law over alleged spyware plot
Cooking up trouble
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Sweary celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is suing members of his wife's family, alleging they used malware to gain illicit access to his business and personal email accounts.
Among other accusations against his wife's family filed in a 42-page court document with the High Court in London, he accuses Chris Hutcheson – father of Ramsay's wife Tana – of hiring IT expert Kevin Fung to use keylogging Trojans to steal passwords from several computers. Hutcheson is the former chief exec of Ramsay's restaurant empire, and was contentiously dismissed by Ramsay last October.
A High court writ further claims that captured passwords were used to intercept confidential emails, The Daily Mail reports. The writ claimed that Jennifer Aves-Eliott, Gordon Ramsay's personal assistant, was also targeted in the attack, which is alleged to have occurred before Hutcheson was fired.
Hutcheson was fired over allegations he withdrew hundreds of thousands in company funds to maintain a double life with a secret second partner and two children. In addition, Hutcheson's wife and son were put on the company payroll without approval by Ramsay, it is alleged.
The complicated private life of Hutcheson, kept secret from Ramsay's wife Tana, was the subject of a super-injunction only lifted back in May.
Commentary on the security aspects of the spyware aspect of the story can be found in a blog post by Sophos here. ®
COMMENTS
Just think...
...about the stream of bad language he must have uttered when he found out!
Gets justifiably angry though
Never used to watch his stuff bcos of all the publicity. Then I happened to catch a couple of his "rescuing a failing restaurant" shows, and I kind of changed my mind. It looks like the reason he gets so angry and abusive is that he truly believes in putting good food in front of customers, and if you're not producing good food then you should fuck off out of the kitchen and let someone else do it. I saw him being great with junior staff - definitely a take-no-prisoners attitude to mistakes, but also highly supportive for people getting it right.
What really seems to piss him off is people thinking they're great and then screwing up, or worse, assuming that customers will put up with a sub-standard product. He seems to tolerate mistakes, so long as you acknowledge you made a mistake and learn from it. Mistakes when you're bigging yourself up are something else; and an attitude that getting things wrong in front of the customer is no big deal is definitely a no-no.
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