Blackcat claimed it successfully infiltrated Reddit and made demands.
The group also known as ALPHV, claimed it stole 80 gigabytes of compressed data from Reddit during a February system hack in a post on its dark web leak website.
Gina Antonini acknowledged that BlackCat’s accusations are related to a cyber incident that Reddit confirmed on February 9. At the time, Christopher Slowe, or KeyserSosa, the CTO of Reddit, claimed that hackers gained access to corporate papers and employee data via a “highly-targeted” phishing attempt.
However, the CTO claimed it had “no evidence” of the threat actor carting away any password or other private user’s data.
Blackcat Threatens to Release Data
On Sunday, ALPHV added Reddit to its list of victims and threatened to leak all of the data it stole.
In its first ransom demand, the group requested $4.5 million. However, in another bid, the threat actor demanded the same amount of money with an addition that the firm removes its new API pricing modifications.
The social media giant ignored the bid and did not provide any explanation of why it did so. As a result, Blackcat said it is no longer open to any negotiations and will release the data. They claimed the “world will see all you’ve been hiding and how you track your users.”
Why add the Pricing Modification?
Recent weeks have seen a lot of controversy surrounding Reddit’s new API pricing plans. Popular third-party Reddit app Apollo has announced it will shut down due to the new pricing, and thousands of subreddits last week went dark in protest of the new API policy — some, like r/music and r/videos, indefinitely.
In 2018, Reddit suffered a more significant data breach in which hackers gained access to an exact replica of Reddit data from 2007. Usernames, hashed passwords, emails, public posts, and private messages were all included.
