The criminal group behind the February Reddit hack is now demanding $4.5 million and the dropping of API changes, or the stolen data will be published.
If you think this will change anything at Reddit, think again.
Reddit will not pay them or meet their demands. If they do reverse any of their API changes, it won't be because of this. Businesses can't been seen to be caving to ransomware groups and rightly so, as it just encourages more of these types of attacks. ALPHV is 100% trying to cash in on the current resentment towards Reddit and it shows.
We also don't know what exactly has been accessed, as neither the group nor Reddit will confirm beyond Reddit stating that no production systems or user data was accessed. It could be 80GB of cat GIFs for all we know - I'm going to need more evidence that they have something big than a screenshot of the attacker saying "trust me bro".
Yeah, since the attack already happened in February, they just used this opportunity to make them look good ("they are doing something for the community"). However, I don't know, but it might affect stock when Reddit goes public.
If they wanted to damage the IPO, they'd have done this just before the IPO was due to go live, or just after. Reddit has plenty of time to restore investor confidence before that happens.