Not Only Ransom Money, The BlackCat Ransomware Gang Also Asks For Changes In The Reddit API

BlackCat asks for a reddit API change (photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - In February, Reddit revealed that they had been victims of a phishing scheme, which allowed the perpetrators of the crime to access some confidential employee data, former employees, and advertisers. But at that time, no data was publicly spread.

However, the BlackCat ransomware gang also known as the ALPHV responsible for the hack recently claimed that they had 80 GB of data they had managed to access from Reddit.

In a post titled "The Reddit Files", BlackCat announced it would remove the information if Reddit gave him 4.5 million dollars or around IDR 67.7 billion and reverse the increase in API prices. But if not, they will start spreading the data.

BlackCat's demands for this API change are a new addition to ransom, as it changes Reddit about how they share data with third parties. The results led to applications like Apollo being closed because they would not be able to pay a fee of 20 million US dollars (Rp300 billion) to withdraw data.

Subreddit is currently protesting the change with a planned blackout, or reopening with a new John Oliver-themed rule.

In fact, in the past week, many subreddits have been converted into individuals to protest against the new API policy. Where, they have to pay extra fees to use their APIs in running third-party applications and bots.

Responding to the protest, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman in an interview with The Verge said that the outage of the app had no impact on the company's decisions.

"In this case? That's true. We've had previous blackouts where there's a little more room to move. But the core of this one is the change in API prices. That's our business decision. And we didn't cancel that business decision," he said.