The following post is one I’ve thought about writing for almost a month now, but didn’t think there was much to it until recently.
Back in February, Reddit was hacked by a ransomware group and approx. 80GB of data was exfiltrated.
At the time, it wasn’t certain which of the numerous ransomware groups were responsible, but recently, it has been revealed that it was the AlphaV / BlackCat gang who managed to breach the popular social site.
I’ve previously posted about this ransomware gang. See the list below for posts related to this prolific gang:
- Blog 73 – MoaR ransomware attacks
- Blog 74 – Ransomware gang sinks to new low
- Blog 78 – Ransomware – The Internet’s biggest threat
- Blog 121 – Time’s up for western digital
At the time of the attack, Reddit said that the attackers had used a “sophisticated and highly-targeted” phishing attack to get access to internal documents and data, including contact information for employees and advertisers.
The statement said that the attackers had not accessed user data that wasn’t already public.
Ransom demand
In recent events, the ransomware gang has posted on their leak site that they want USD$4.5M for the data.
The gang also stated that they have held on to the data until now because they were waiting for the upcoming Reddit IPO and that they would release the data around that time to cause the most impact on the company share prices.
Additional conditions
In a new twist. The gang have also now added to their demand that they want Reddit to reverse their controversial decision to change the pricing structure for access to their API for third-party developers.
This new demand comes after Reddit announced that the changes to API access which would see many current developers priced out of the market as the fees for data access would be in excess of USD$20M a year.
The shocking news has sent the Reddit community into protest mode with many Sub-Reddits either closing for good in response, or by turning completely private and leaving Reddit with no new data being posted – effectively leaving the site stale with no new content – For a site which describes itself as the Frontpage of the Internet – new, fresh content is its’ lifeblood.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman responded to the uprising of Reddit users & moderators by saying that the protests were not representitive of the greater Reddit community and that most users were not in favour of the balck-out protests.
In response to these statements, many sub-Reddits held a vote on whether to return to business as usual, or to re-open but only allow posts featuring comedian John Oliver.
Most users voted for the John Oliver approach…
Conclusion – Don’t mess with the Hive-mind