Reddit revealed in February this year that it had been a victim of a targeted phishing campaign that gave malicious actors access to their internal data including confidential documents, and information on current and former employees, along with advertising data.
Now, ransomware group BlackCat has claimed responsibility for the attack and has threatened to leak 80GB of uncompressed data unless their demands are met. The ransom has been set for $4.5 million, and the group has also demanded that Reddit reverse its controversial API pricing.
Also read | Reddit Blackout Begins as Forums Protest Charges for Developers
The company has found itself in the eye of the storm recently when it announced it was going to start charging companies for access to its data APIs, which have been used to train AI models.
Thousands of Reddit communities went dark to protest the changes that they believe imposed expensive conditions on creators of popular third-party apps. The increase in cost has forced popular apps like Apollo to shut down.
Also read | Reddit to lay off about 5% of its workforce
The ransomware group is now demanding that Reddit undo these changes and says the company ignored the past two contact attempts in April and June. In fact, they don't expect the company to pay the ransom.
According to a post seen by Engadget, BlackCat says that it's, "confident that Reddit will not pay any money for their data" and they "expect to leak the data".
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