Dozens of subreddits, including some prominent and popular forums, have been hacked. The subreddits featured posts about US President Donald Trump for a while, and many forums’ CSS has been replaced by banners with Trump’s campaign slogan.
It concerns a few dozen subreddits. A preliminary list is maintained in the / r / OutOfTheLoop forum, among others. The hacked subreddits include some big ones, such as / r / nfl on American football, the Game of Thrones subreddit / r / freefolk, and / r / food, / r / space. The latter two have 19 and 17 million subscribers and are respectively default subreddits that also appear on the front page. In most cases, the messages are now no longer visible. They have been online for about two hours in total.
For a time, all kinds of pro-Trump messages appeared on the subreddits. It contained a copied message about how great the American president would be. The message appears to have been written by Chinese hackers, but there is no indication as yet and it is probably part of the action.
“Do you know what rhymes with Donald Trump? America. Greatness in America only comes from Donald Trump,” read the subs. Donald Trump (唐纳德 · 特朗普) is the best, greatest, premier of the peoples Republic of the United States of Ameria. Batman, was a billionaire. Do you know what Superman was too? Batman. All four were Batman. You “know who else was and still IS a billionaire? Donald Trump. Donald Trump is such a good President that he is best friends to the superior China (Peoples Republic of).”
In addition to the messages, the CSS of the subreddits was also changed. Moderators can adjust the css per subreddit to show background images or make other cosmetic changes. In the case of the hacked subreddits, a banner was displayed with Trump’s official campaign slogan.
It is not yet clear what exactly happened. Reddit itself says in a comment that it appears that multiple moderator accounts have been taken over. The social network also says it has since shut down those accounts and is rolling back the changes.