So they “broke into Reddit” back in February and contacted Reddit in April. After Reddit didn’t react they contacted them again a few days ago at this very opportunistic time.
They never specified exactly what kind of data they stole, nor did they prove it by providing samples.
For all we know this story could be entirely made up and they actually have nothing.
But even if they have something, them trying to come across as the good guys in this is so weird to me. No, you’re not the good guys. You are criminals.
February? Then I believe they have obtained a full copy of all posts and comments on the site. /s
(For those who don’t get the joke: https://github.com/Watchful1/PushshiftDumps - full dumps of all Reddit data up to February exist, and I think archive.org has the March file too)
They may be the bad guys, but they’re not necessarily bad guys
“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
I wonder if u/spez ordered this hack so he can back off and save face. Of course I don’t know the context but that’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Nah, reading this no this hack is personal. They hacked this site months ago and now they’re coming in here looking the heroes of the story? No, they were ignored. The hackers got pissed and now they’re using this as an opportunity to get back at reddit. So what, they got maybe a terabyte of decompressed data at most, and they want 4 million dollars? This feels like some script kiddies utilizing a bad situation after getting ignored, not a professional op.
80gb? That isn’t too much but guess if it’s internal information and docs could be damaging to a public offering.
Might be a single weird Bee Movie video meme as well.
For context, based on historical pushshift data:
- 80gb zipped decompresses to ~1100GB of text data
- 80gb zipped would only be the most recent ~4 months of comments
They do indicate that the data they have is more valuable though, particularly pointing out how users are being tracked (GDPR alarm bells ringing) or censored.
Ransomware operators are scum and should not be trusted, let alone paid.
Is there any way to validate these claims?
No, haha. They also didn’t bother to check what was stolen, so they could have very well gotten 80G of memes.
I took that to mean no one at Reddit bothered to check what was stolen.
Likewise, to me I interpreted as “There was no attempt (from reddit) to find out what we took.”
How do people even know what’s been stolen? I know if someone logged into my server and copied stuff, they only way I’d know would be higher data usage.
Either server logs, or the hackers sending them part of the data they have to prove they’re ligit. I assume the latter would have happened if Reddit had shown any interest in negotiating.
Can you share the onion link here
Is it safe to assume that nothing comes of this… Just like every other “hacker group” pretending they hacked some major entitity for a good cause?
I want the API changes reverted as much as any other Reddit refugees here, but I can’t stand behind this kind of malfeasant extortion.
Not only is it blatantly obvious they’re using the API change rhetoric as a means of irritating Reddit into giving them their hush money, it also avts towards delegitimising all protest efforts made by the Subreddits thus far
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But as the text says, this extortion began 5 days before the API changes were even announced. These criminals don’t give a f*ck about the API and threaten to leak the data of those same users they’re claiming to protect.
I think we should just ignore this, because it’s a distraction for public pressure and will only make Reddit look better - either by delegitimising the protest or by making them look like a victim instead of the perpetrator they are.
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I’m going to say what you did, more diplomatically:
While I don’t condone extortion via hacking or any other means, I acknowledge that Reddit and its’ dysfunctional, incompetent corporate culture - with Huffman at the top - brought this development upon themselves.
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I’m going with, no. Or, who cares? No biggie.
Is it weird that I kind of want both groups to lose out here?
The enemy of my enemy is also my enemy.
Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.
-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
Haha suck shit!
Realizes it’s probably my data too.
Yeah. These guys aren’t heroes. They’re threatening to screw us.
Is there any information on what kind of data they stole? It’s a public forum with a lot of public data, it makes no sense that they negotiate about data that is already public.
Well they mention Github artifacts in that message so it sounds like it’s more like they may have obtained source code and that sort of non public stuff.
Their code was open source until 2017 and it’s got progressively more dogshit for the end user since, I suspect if this is real it’s probably a bit juicier.
