Ransomware gang BlackCat has taken credit for a February breach wherein Reddit was the victim of a phishing attack. The gang, which says it has 80 gigabytes of company data, initially asked for $4.5 million in hush money to not leak the data but has since added a new demand: That Reddit reverse its controversial application programming interface (API) pricing policy changes that mean many of the site’s third-party app makers won’t be able to afford keeping their apps alive on the platform (via BleepingComputer).
On Saturday, BlackCat revealed it reached out to the company twice since February but hadn’t heard back regarding their demand for $4.5 million in exchange for the stolen data (Reddit publicly acknowledged the breach and denied that any critical data was stolen). As a result, BlackCat raised the stakes and went public with its demands, adding that Reddit must revert its controversial API policy change or risk the aforementioned 80 gigabytes of private data getting leaked.
The ransomware gang is not the only group protesting the recent API changes. Many subreddits (subsections of the Reddit site) shut down on Monday and Tuesday to protest the pricing changes in solidarity with the developers being priced out of crafting apps for Reddit. These blackout efforts were orchestrated by various subreddits’ moderators.
These actions led to a moment wherein Reddit CEO Steve Huffman called moderators “landed gentry,” indicating they weren’t behaving in a democratic manner by affording users a voice on whether to protest the site or use it as intended. Landed gentry refers to a class in Britain which had disproportionate power over what happened to land when compared to average citizenry.
Many subreddits are still protesting the API changes, going well beyond the scope of the original two-day protest. One of them, r/memes, has dedicated its entire subreddit to medieval memes in direct response to Huffman’s “gentry” comment.
A Reddit spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
