BlackCat Hacking Group Claims To Have Stolen 80GB of Data From Reddit

Ransomware Gang BlackCat also known as AlphV has claimed to have hacked Reddit amidst all of its current drama surrounding its API pricing.

Reddit Hack Claims

Based on Information shared by BleepingComputer, the BlackCat Ransomware gang has claimed responsibility for a system breach that occurred back in February after an employee fell victim to a phishing attack. The claim from BlackCat was shared by Dominic Alvieri who is a Cybersecurity analyst and security researcher and shared a screenshot from AlphV’s site on Twitter. The claim states that the group took 80GB of zipped data from Reddit and attempted to contact officials on April 13th and June 16th with no response from Reddit. The group states that they want $4.5 million in exchange for the deleted data and, not shown in the image below but shared by ely_sec, that they also want Reddit to withdraw the API pricing change that has caused so much drama lately. The group also threatens to release data surrounding the statistics that they track about users as well as the fact that Reddit silently censors users which I’m not surprised about.

Will This Affect The API Change?

The next question surrounding this breach is whether it will be enough to convince Reddit that their API pricing changes are not going to end well for them at all. Considering Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is very adamant about this change I don’t see a reverse of this change coming any time soon. Recently Huffman claimed that Moderators were too powerful and he aims to reduce their power plus claimed to The Associated Press that “he’s not backing off.”

As far as I can tell not even a Ransomware attack is enough to convince him so I really don’t know what will.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments.