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.
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.”
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)
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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But when that spanking both threatens the very users they’re claiming to fight for, and threatens to delegitimise all of those user’s and moderator’s protest efforts by giving Reddit a victimhood, I think it is downright stupid to cheer that on
Karma IS a bitch, but I for one am still not going to stand behind illegalities like this. It’s not the way.
As I said before, these hackers don’t care. The grandstanding is their way of getting attention off the backs of the protests. All supporting these criminals does is delegitimise the real protest by making Reddit look like the victim.
That aside, even from a practical standpoint this wouldn’t work longterm. If extorted into backpeddalling, Reddit will just quietly up their data security, and once they’ve made sure the threat of a leak is dealt with, they’ll go right on back to the API change.
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While I agree with you, it’s also hard for me to feel bad for Reddit in this scenario.
I think it’s not relevant to our cause either way and it’s something that will be forgotten about eventually even if whatever data gets leaked publicly.
Ransomware operators are scum and should not be trusted, let alone paid.
This isn’t ransomware. This is standard blackmail.
Correct, but done by ransomware operators.
Not that this isn’t scummy but my understanding is that “ransomware” refers to software that locks a user or organization out of their systems until a fee is paid, generally my encrypting the disk.
This seems like a more traditional “hack” of a system where you get in and download data. Which makes threatening them is traditional blackmail.
The point is that Alphv is an operator of ransomware as a service (RaaS), specifically BlackCat, independent of whether they used ransomware in this specific attack (which it indeed doesn’t sound like).
Oh I see. I misunderstood the comment then. Thanks for the clarification!
I’ll have more respect if it were done by disgruntled employees, but this blackmail is done by a ransomware operator.
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Agreed they definitely shouldn’t pay these guys.
unfolds chair
Yup. They absolutely shouldn’t pay, for decision theoretic reasons, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be interesting fireworks to watch.
I’ll be real curious if they have browsing data or subs tied to email addresses. How many .gov emails are subbed to nothing but fetish and porn subreddits?
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
It’s enemies all the way down
Always has been.
Nah you’re not going to catch me rooting for a ransomware attacker
If it hurts the IPO, I’m all for it. My data on reddit is worthless anyway…
Fuck spez, but this is not the way. Why even ask for money if they don’t expect Reddit to pay? That cheapens their cause.
Their cause is the money. Everything else is marketing.
lol, fuck reddit, but do they expect us to cheer for them when they’re holding user data hostage? They can fucking right off too.
Is there any way to validate these claims?
Usually what happens is that these sorts of blackmailers will leak small, verifiable pieces of data so people know they really got something. We don’t see that here, so for now there’s no reason to take them seriously yet.
It would still be really easy for Reddit to say “nah homie, thats not our data” even if it is and even if Reddit knows that it is.
How are the hackers able to verify that the data did come from Reddit?
No. If Reddit would negotiate with them, they’d probably leak small subsets as proof that they have actual data that isn’t available publicly. But with no negotiations, there’s not really any need for that.
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.
I read that to mean Reddit didn’t try to identify the stolen data, rather than the exploitists. Is that right?
If Reddit were to reach out privately to this group, the first thing they’d probably do is ask for proof. It’s trivially easy to provide proof you’ve carried out a hack; you just present some specific information that was not public and describe what all else you have in specific enough terms they know you’re not bluffing. (Or, I suppose you could just send them your whole dump if you really want to make it clear what all you have). The only way the rest of us will be able to validate these claims is if they leak and it either matches users’ own private account info or Reddit issues a disclosure about the hack (which I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to do regardless).
>reddit fucks over users
>hackers fuck over users
why do this?
Money lol. If they do have it and reddit negotiates then they’ll probably expect to be offered a higher price for dropping the API demand. They are just upping the ante.
I wouldn’t give them a cent or negotiate at all either, and the public aren’t going to give a shit about how they’re being tracked.
I kind of assumed that everything that could be logged was, and that it would be data-mined insofar as value could be extracted from it down the line.
If that were the case it would likely breach GDPR.
Negotiating is futile. They can never prove beyond “trust me bro” that they deleted the data, nor that they kept it secret, so why would they actually follow up?
Whatever they have, if it is good they have already sold it to several interested parties under the table, and they will continue to do so. This is just an attempt to grift out a bit of extra cash.
john-oliver-cool-sarcastic.gif
Put up or shut up
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, assuming that this is even directly related to the forum, as opposed to, say, email logs from the Reddit internal email server or something, things that might not be public:
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Private messages between users.
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Browsing data. I mean, maybe a user only posts on /r/politics, and that’s public, but spends a lot of time browsing /r/femdom or whatever.
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IP addresses of users. Might be able to associate multiple accounts held by a user.
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Passwords (while hopefully stored in a salted and hashed format, they can still be attacked via dictionary attacks, which is why people are told not to use short and predictable passwords.
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Email addresses (if a user registered one)
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Reddit has some private chat feature that I’ve never used, which I imagine is logged.
Reddit used to be open source and the password was hashed using bcrypt.
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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.
reddit has private messaging and a chat feature as well.
lol, ok. i mean, even if this is true (which, eh, maybe it is), I’m not really sure it’s worth what they’re asking for it. if this threat is genuine, and they follow through, it will certainly be publically embarrassing for spez at a really bad time. but there’s zero chance he’s going to give in to their demands.
i don’t expect the data dump would contain anything particularly juicy, or these demands would have been made months ago. it’s just that it would be embarrassing for reddit (and spez) if it happened, particularly right now.
Reddit has been going for like a billion years, and you only got 80GB - I mean even zipped, that can’t even be a fraction of the data surely?
Depends on what kind of data, if it’s mostly internal documents / dumps of whatever communication systems they use etc, it would not be too large (mostly because of retention policies on that software).
If it is actually the data straight from Reddit’s production databases, then 80GB does sound questionable. But then what kind of data are we talking about? Is it actually valuable?
Anyways, this is big (if true).
I’d be surprised if the data was just content. Memes and texts aren’t particularly valuable.
However, data that can be used for tracking/developing user profiles such as what they’re subscribed to, how active they are, and how they all link to one another is especially useful for conpetetitors and marketers. Plus any personal data such as emails and profiles. I wouldn’t be surprised if you managed to get a huge amount of data under 80gb if it’s just text (think how big a 80gb excel sheet would be)
internal documents, source code, employee data, and limited data about the company’s advertisers.
I could get 80 GB of Reddit data in a day. ArchiveTeam has uploaded 2.97 PB (1PB is 1024 TB or 1048576 GB) so far trying to back up all of Reddit to the Internet Archive and they’re still not finished!
