Things just keep getting better for Reddit.
Less than a week after CEO Steve Huffman made headlines with a series of, um, interesting quotes about the site’s new API pricing, it seems he has another bug to squash. According to a post shared by cybersecurity analyst Dominic Alvieri, the hacker group BlackCat has claimed responsibility for a data breach Reddit suffered in February.
They want a $4.5 million payout and for Reddit to reverse the planned API pricing changes, or else the data will be publicly released.
At the time, Reddit disclosed(opens in a new tab) that contact info for employees and tidbits about advertisers were included in the data, but didn’t make it sound especially serious.
According to the BlackCat post, however, some of the data that was taken includes documentation about the site “silently censoring” users. It should be noted that there’s no definitive proof at the moment that BlackCat actually conducted the hack or has any data to reveal.
Reddit has been in a state of temporary blackout (meaning a lot of subreddits have voluntarily shut down) for more than a week because Reddit wants to make its API much more expensive for third-party apps to use. That would mean popular third-party apps like Apollo would have to shut down for lack of ability to pay the price.
Whether or not BlackCat’s claims are true, they really couldn’t have come at a less convenient time for Huffman.
