Hackers who say they stole Reddit data demand the platform reverses its API pricing policy and pay $4.5 million ransom it previously asked for

Hackers are demanding Reddit policy changes amid an ongoing battle over its API pricing.
The group said it had stolen data and asked Reddit in April for $4.5 million to delete it.
As well as the funds, they are now demanding Reddit reverses its API pricing plans, per The Verge.

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Hackers are threatening to publicly release 80 GB of Reddit data they say they have stolen.

In February, Reddit confirmed that a phishing attack on the company had taken place. It said at the time that “the attacker sent out plausible-sounding prompts pointing employees to a website that cloned the behavior of our intranet gateway.”

Ransomware group, BlackCat, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a screenshot shared on Twitter by cybersecurity analyst Dominic Alvieri. The group said they first contacted Reddit in April, asking for $4.5 million to delete the data.

Last week, the hackers followed up by continuing to demand the money and additionally asking Reddit to reverse its planned API pricing changes, per The Verge.

Reddit said in its February post there was no evidence the hackers had accessed user data that wasn’t already public. There had been limited exposure of contact information for some of its past and present employees, it added.

Representatives for Reddit did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, made outside normal working hours.

The planned API pricing changes have proved controversial, sparking protests and blackouts across the site. The main protest took place on Monday and Tuesday last week when almost 3,500 subreddits went dark for a 48-hour blackout. The situation was so tense that the company’s CEO told employees not to wear Reddit-branded gear in public, per The Verge, which cited an internal memo it had obtained.

While most subreddits appear to be accessible again, some prominent ones including r/pics and r/videos plan to keep up the pressure. 

CEO Steve Huffman is showing no signs of backing down, however. He told NBC News last week that the sites’ mods were too powerful and he planned to change the rules so users had the power to vote out the moderators of subreddits.

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