What do you think of the reddit hack that supposedly happened?
What do you think of the reddit hack that supposedly happened?
The criminal group behind the February Reddit hack is now demanding $4.5 million and the dropping of API changes, or the stolen data will be published.
Sucks that they lumped API changes into their demands. This is going to make good-faith protestors look bad.
Crackpot idea: it's a false flag operation by reddit admins trying to sour protest support
as it happened in February, I'm not so sure...
No website is invulnerable. Since we know from Reddit's godawful official app they don't do development very well, no doubt the website also has vulnerable holes.
If you think this will change anything at Reddit, think again.
Reddit will not pay them or meet their demands. If they do reverse any of their API changes, it won't be because of this. Businesses can't been seen to be caving to ransomware groups and rightly so, as it just encourages more of these types of attacks. ALPHV is 100% trying to cash in on the current resentment towards Reddit and it shows.
We also don't know what exactly has been accessed, as neither the group nor Reddit will confirm beyond Reddit stating that no production systems or user data was accessed. It could be 80GB of cat GIFs for all we know - I'm going to need more evidence that they have something big than a screenshot of the attacker saying "trust me bro".
Yeah, since the attack already happened in February, they just used this opportunity to make them look good ("they are doing something for the community"). However, I don't know, but it might affect stock when Reddit goes public.
I doubt it.
If they wanted to damage the IPO, they'd have done this just before the IPO was due to go live, or just after. Reddit has plenty of time to restore investor confidence before that happens.
It happened a while back and is just popping up again now because they're capitalizing on the Reddit drama. So I don't really have an opinion on them -- hacking bad, etc but I don't really care.
I've seen a few sites welcome the news with glee, as though Reddit's leadership is going to be strongly affected. That's childish and myopic. This is bad news for everyone.
Whether or not Reddit pays, we should assume the data will make its way into the hands of people who (further) weaponize it against Reddit's users, e.g. people who've posted risque photos of themselves or shared compromising details through throwaway accounts can be doxxed or matched to their normal accounts via their IP or other common details. PMs and other private account details might contain mailing addresses and other private or compromising information, too. (Edit: as Phoeniqz points out in replies, the article author assumes this is not the case based on Reddit's and BlackCat's statements about the leak.)
If Reddit knew about the breach earlier and didn't do their due diligence to alert users, then that's further condemnation of their leadership and priorities, but it doesn't undo the damage this might cause users.
If Reddit were to pay BlackCat, then it would further enrich, reward, and encourage them. If, as is more likely, it doesn't, then the blowback it receives (especially from any high profile consequences of the leak) might encourage other companies to pay up in future.
From the article:
We can be pretty sure of what to doesn’t include, and that’s user data such as account details, passwords or payment information. That’s because, from the very start, Reddit made it quite clear that the ‘live’ production systems holding such data were not breached.
That’s because, from the very start, Reddit made it quite clear that the ‘live’ production systems holding such data were not breached.
Because Reddit is known for being forthright and honest…
Yes but note the specific details of that assumption and their reasoning: it's based on reddit's announcement of the security incident a few months ago which starts:
Based on our investigation so far, Reddit user passwords and accounts are safe…
Now, look again at what BlackCat has promised in this leak:
Instead, BlackCat is teasing such revelations as "all the statistics they track about their users," and data concerning how Reddit "silently censors users."
80 GB of "statistics and data" about Reddit's users is a lot. It may not contain raw IP addresses, but we know that IP matching is one of the ways Reddit catches sock puppets, so there may at least be a hash that could be used to identify accounts held by the same users.
Am I going too far worrying about PMs and other details? Maybe. It really depends on the honesty and competence of BlackCat and Reddit, and the article author's assumptions based on their statements.
Hopefully they publish the data so we can add to the fediverse
The article says, the data supposedly contains information about Reddit's tracking system. I don't think we want that in the FediVerse
@Phoeniqz If Reddit is only announcing the hack now then that is very likely going to be a legal problem in a number of US jurisdictions, not to mention EU and others.
I'm not so sure tho, as no user data was affected.
My read was that BlackCat only got non-prod data. So perhaps it's sourcecode.
In which case.. they've likely got nothing of value other than the code used to track users.
This will make their IPO go down :D
Reddit will never financially recover from this if they go public