Skip to main content

Hackers threaten to leak 80GB of confidential data stolen from Reddit

Hackers are threatening to release confidential data stolen from Reddit unless the company pays a ransom demand – and reverses its controversial API price hikes. 

In a post on its dark web leak site, the BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV, claims to have stolen 80 gigabytes of compressed data from Reddit during a February breach of the company’s systems. 

Reddit spokesperson Gina Antonini declined to answer TechCrunch’s questions but confirmed that BlackCat’s claims relate to a cyber incident confirmed by Reddit on February 9. At the time, Reddit CTO Christopher Slowe, or KeyserSosa, said that hackers had accessed employee information and internal documents during a “highly-targeted” phishing attack. Slowe added that the company had “no evidence” that personal user data, such as passwords and accounts, had been stolen. 

Reddit didn’t share any further details about the attack or who was behind it. However, BlackCat over the weekend claimed responsibility for the February intrusion and threatened to leak “confidential” data stolen during the breach. It’s unclear exactly what types of data the hackers have stolen, and BlackCat hasn’t shared any evidence of data theft. 

BlackCat was also linked to a March attack on Western Digital that saw hackers steal 10 terabytes of data from the company, including reams of customer information. That same month, the gang also threatened to leak data allegedly stolen from Amazon-owned video surveillance company Ring.

In a post published on Saturday, titled “The Reddit Files”, BlackCat says it contacted Reddit twice – once on April 13 and again on June 16 – but did not receive a response. “I told them in my first email that I would wait for their IPO to come along. But this seems like the perfect opportunity! We are very confident that Reddit will not pay any money for their data,” BlackCat wrote. “We expect to leak the data.”

The hackers say they are demanding $4.5 million in exchange for deleting the stolen data and for Reddit to withdraw its API pricing changes. 

Reddit’s new API pricing plans have been the subject of much controversy in recent weeks: popular third-party Reddit app Apollo has announced it’s closing down as a result of the new pricing, and thousands of subreddits last week went dark in protest of the new API policy – some, including r/music and r/videos, indefinitely. 

When asked by TechCrunch, Reddit declined to say whether it plans to respond to BlackCat’s demands. 

Reddit experienced a more serious data breach in 2018 that saw attackers access a complete copy of Reddit data from 2007. This included usernames, hashed passwords, emails, public posts and private messages.

Hackers threaten to leak 80GB of confidential data stolen from Reddit by Carly Page originally published on TechCrunch



source https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/19/hackers-threaten-to-leak-80gb-of-confidential-data-stolen-from-reddit/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Max Q: Psyche(d)

In this issue: SpaceX launches NASA asteroid mission, news from Relativity Space and more. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/h6Kjrde via IFTTT
Post a Comment
Read more

Max Q: Anomalous

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Last week wasn’t the most successful for spaceflight missions. We’ll get into that a bit more below. In this issue: First up, a botched launch from Virgin Orbit… …followed by one from ABL Space Systems News from Rocket Lab, World View and more Virgin Orbit’s botched launch highlights shaky financial future After Virgin Orbit’s launch failure last Monday, during which the mission experienced an  “anomaly” that prevented the rocket from reaching orbit, I went back over the company’s financials — and things aren’t looking good. For Virgin Orbit, this year has likely been completely turned on its head. The company was aiming for three launches this year, but everything will remain grounded until the cause of the anomaly has been identified and resolved. It’s unclear how long that will take, but likely at least three months. Add this delay to Virgin’s dwindling cash reserves and you have a foundation that’s suddenly much shakier than before. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What’s Stripe’s deal?

Welcome to  The Interchange ! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up  here  so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it — and make sense of it — so you can stay in the know. —  Mary Ann Stripe eyes exit, reportedly tried raising at a lower valuation The big news in fintech this week revolved around payments giant Stripe . On January 26, my Equity Podcast co-host and overall amazingly talented reporter Natasha Mascarenhas and I teamed up to write about how Stripe had set a 12-month deadline for itself to go public, either through a direct listing or by pursuin...
Post a Comment
Read more