On rainy, wet. the hacker group BlackCat has issued a harsh threat against Reddit: will publish 80 GB of stolen sensitive data to the company, if it does not pay a ransom and roll back the controversial implementation of its payment API.
Until now, it is not known what kind of secret information hackers have. TechCruch collects that cybercriminals claim to have collected it during an attack on Reddit in February. However, at the moment they have not provided evidence to confirm that the material is in their possession.
It is worth noting that the Reddit hack was real, and even recognized by the company led by Steve Huffman. At that time, from the platform they commented that one of his employees had been the victim of a campaign of phishing. This had led to a breach of their business systems, allowing hackers to access internal documentation—including contact information for their workers—and the site’s code. However, it was ensured that the data of the user accounts had not been affected.
The BlackCat group claims to have contacted Reddit on two occasions, without receiving a response to their demands. The most recent would have been last Friday, June 16, according to the hackers. In their message to the company, they would have promised to delete all the stolen data only if the new API is taken down, and a $4.5 million ransom is paid.
Reddit, at the mercy of a group of hackers
BlackCat’s threats come at one of the worst times in Reddit history. The platform is experiencing a very strong rejection by the implementation of a payment API for third-party customers. It has not only been severely criticized for its price, but also for the short notice given to developers about its entry into force. This has led, for example, to the closure of Apollo, one of the best and most popular Reddit clients for iPhone.
As if this were not enough, Huffman’s statements in a recent AMA trying to clarify the situation, have only angered the moderators of the most popular subreddits. To the point that a large number of communities have decided to carry out a “blackout” in protest of the company’s measures.
Since the leadership of Reddit they have tried to lower the foam to the boycott of its users. “There’s a lot of noise with this. Some of the loudest we’ve ever seen. […] And like all explosions on Reddit, this one too shall pass.”Huffman said in a message sent to his employees.
In fact, it was learned that the platform was trying to convince lower-level moderators of certain subreddits to report their superiors. In this way, it would have sought to break the blackouts and achieve the reopening of some of the communities that became private.
reopening and trolling
In response, in the last few hours three of Reddit’s most important communities—r/pics, r/aww, and r/gifs—have reopened. However, they only allow material about the British comedian to be published. john oliverhost of the show Last Week Tonight from HBO and HBO Max. A clear trolling against the managers of Reddit, which Oliver himself has been in charge of supporting on his social networks.
Regarding the BlackCat attack, Reddit has chosen not to comment. From the hacker group they said that their original intention was to wait for the company to go public to leak the information, but that the plans changed with the events of recent weeks. “We are very confident that Reddit will not pay for your data. We hope to leak the information”indicated the cybercriminals.