In February 2023, Reddit, the social news aggregation platform, experienced a security breach where attackers gained unauthorized access to internal documents, code, and some business systems.
The company revealed that it was a highly-targeted phishing attack that affected its employees, but reassured users that their passwords and accounts remained uncompromised. The phishing emails redirected recipients to a fake intranet gateway page designed to trick them into disclosing their credentials and second-factor tokens.
Reddit conducted an internal investigation and determined that a single employee had fallen victim to the phishing attack, leading to the compromise of internal documents, code, and some dashboards and business systems.
However, the company found no evidence to suggest that non-public data had been accessed, published, or distributed online. Reddit promptly responded to the incident by locking out the attackers and taking necessary security measures.
The BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware gang recently claimed responsibility for the February cyberattack on Reddit. According to the group’s messages on their Tor data leak site, they assert that they stole 80GB of data from Reddit and attempted to contact the company on two occasions, in April and June, but received no response. The ransomware group demands $4.5 million in exchange for deleting the stolen data and threatens to make it public if their demands are not met.
They also criticize Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, and threaten to expose confidential data and user tracking statistics.
The BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware gang has been active since November 2021 and has targeted various organizations, including SOLAR INDUSTRIES INDIA, NJVC (a US defense contractor), Creos Luxembourg S.A. (a gas pipeline company), Moncler (a fashion giant), Swissport, NCR, and Western Digital. Reddit now faces the dilemma of whether to pay the ransom or risk having the stolen data exposed to the public, which may include confidential information about users and the company’s tracking practices.
