What HappenedIn mid-2026, an emerging cybercriminal group known as ExfilSquad launched a high-profile extortion campaign targeting prominent UK organisations across the public sector, education, and law enforcement, as well as other firms worldwide.Unlike traditional ransomware groups, ExfilSquad does not deploy encryptors or destructive malware. Instead, they operate as a pure data extortion group, stealing data and threatening to publish it on their onion-based Data Leak Site (DLS) if a ransom
In mid-2026, an emerging cybercriminal group known as ExfilSquad launched a high-profile extortion campaign targeting prominent UK organisations across the public sector, education, and law enforcement, as well as other firms worldwide.
Unlike traditional ransomware groups, ExfilSquad does not deploy encryptors or destructive malware. Instead, they operate as a pure data extortion group, stealing data and threatening to publish it on their onion-based Data Leak Site (DLS) if a ransom is not paid.
Several prominent UK entities have confirmed breaches linked to the group:
UK Department for Education (DfE): Approximately 600,000 records stolen from its Help Portal containing parent and staff contact details (names, emails, phone numbers, job titles), plus around 7,000 records from the Turing Portal.
Police National Legal Database (PNLD): Stole 1.9 GB of data (around 135,000 records) containing contact information for over 100,000 serving police officers, staff, and criminal justice professionals, alongside around 21,000 "Ask the Police" public inquiry records.
Newcastle University: Approximately 440,000 records compromised containing applicant and student contact information, personally identifiable information (PII), and admissions database records caused by a technical configuration flaw connecting to an admissions system.
Analysis of the details left on the data leak site revealed that ExfilSquad's primary attack vector involves exploiting misconfigurations in cloud portals, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, internal case management systems, as well as Microsoft Power Pages data tables left publicly accessible without proper authentication.
To force compliance and prove their claims are real, ExfilSquad uploaded multi-gigabyte torrent files for each victim to their TOR leak site. Resecurity noted that ExfilSquad assigns a distinct Torrent Tracker and initial Web Seed per victim.
Analyst Comment
While ExfilSquad is a new group, they appear to be already experienced at running these types of attacks, suggesting they have a history of cybercrime. Plus, ExfilSquad’s recent campaign highlights the growing trend of transitioning from file-encrypting ransomware to extortion driven entirely by cloud and SaaS misconfigurations. Organisations that have invested in defending against endpoint-based threats are often leaving critical business application interfaces exposed.
SaaS platforms continue to be primary targets of English-speaking cybercrime communities. In recent years, customers of major SaaS providers, such as Salesloft, Salesforce, and Snowflake have all been extorted. Microsoft Power Pages portals, CRM databases, and customer support helpdesks frequently hold vast repositories of sensitive contact data and interaction histories. When internet-facing API endpoints or data table permissions are left unauthenticated or unpatched, cybercriminals can systematically scrape massive volumes of data without ever needing to drop a payload or escalate privileges internally.
ExfilSquad’s reliance on torrent distribution further amplifies reputational and operational damage. While gangs like LockBit, Clop, and Akira have previously utilised torrents, ExfilSquad’s operational twist of assigning unique Torrent Trackers and dedicated Web Seeds to individual victims ensures that leaked files distribute rapidly across P2P networks, making it extremely difficult to perform a takedown.
While ExfilSquad’s breaches have largely compromised contact directories and administrative support records, the real-world risks remain significant. Exposing work emails, names, and organisational structures for over 100,000 police officers and civil servants poses distinct social engineering, spear-phishing, and physical security concerns that impacted institutions will have to manage long after the breach occurs.
Defensive Takeaways
Audit Microsoft Power Pages and Public SaaS Tables: Regularly review public data table permissions, web API settings, and unauthenticated browser views across Microsoft Power Pages, CRMs, and customer support portals to ensure backend data tables are not exposed to the public internet.
Harden CRM and Case Management Integrations: Treat external-facing admissions portals, helpdesks, and case management systems as high-risk platforms. Implement strict access controls, conduct routine configuration audits, and enforce proper API token security.
Deploy External Attack Surface Management (EASM): Utilise continuous external attack surface scanning to detect newly exposed web endpoints, misconfigured database connectors, and publicly exposed storage buckets before malicious actors locate them.
Incorporate Pure Extortion into Incident Response Plans: Security teams must adapt incident response playbooks for data-theft-only scenarios. Organisations may seek to establish protocols for monitoring peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and managing public disclosures when stolen data is distributed via torrents.
What HappenedOn 7 August 2026, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) disclosed that between July 2021 and June 2023, the ACRO Criminal Records Office suffered three separate compromises involving its customer portal website (acro.police.uk).ACRO is a national police unit providing public services such as issuing Police Certificates, International Child Protection Certificates, and processing Subject Access Requests.In March 2023, ACRO was notified about an SQL injection attack that repo
On 7 August 2026, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) disclosed that between July 2021 and June 2023, the ACRO Criminal Records Office suffered three separate compromises involving its customer portal website (acro.police.uk).
ACRO is a national police unit providing public services such as issuing Police Certificates, International Child Protection Certificates, and processing Subject Access Requests.
In March 2023, ACRO was notified about an SQL injection attack that reportedly exposed 15 sets of credentials, the majority of which belonged to its employees.
A subsequent forensic investigation uncovered long-term threat actor activity within the website's environment, spanning from 9 July 2021 to 22 June 2023.
The website was built on the Kentico CMS and was running version 12.0.0 between September 2019 and March 2023. This version had multiple known vulnerabilities at the time of the incident, but suffered from ambiguity around who was accountable for patching led to missed hotfixes and updates.
Between 15 and 16 February 2023, an unknown threat actor staged personal data for exfiltration, which included Police Certificate Applications, Subject Access Request (SAR) forms, and International Child Protection Certificate forms.
Due to insufficient log retention, ACRO could not definitively determine if the data was successfully exfiltrated. A maximum of 10,920 data subjects had their data staged, but ACRO ultimately notified 84,048 data subjects on a precautionary basis in April 2023.
Notably, on 23 February 2023, the ICO learned that ACRO's Trend Micro antivirus software detected and quarantined four attempts to install the well-known credential harvesting tool Mimikatz. However, because ACRO operated without a documented patching policy and lacked a structured process for analyzing security alerts, these warnings were never reviewed or acted upon.
Analyst Comment
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) reprimand against the ACRO underscores the persistent issue within many organisations of a breakdown in basic IT governance and accountability. The fact that a threat actor was able to operate within the environment for nearly two years highlights systemic failures in both vulnerability management and security monitoring. Running an outdated content management system with known vulnerabilities for several years is a critical oversight. The ambiguity surrounding patching responsibilities created a dangerous blind spot that adversaries successfully exploited.
Further, the failure to act on critical security alerts is also a classic breakdown in the incident response chain. While the deployed Trend Micro antivirus successfully detected and quarantined a known threat, the alerts were ultimately ignored. Security tools are only as effective as the teams monitoring and responding to them. Without a structured review process, even the most sophisticated detection capabilities fall flat.
It is important to note, however, that while private sector organisations will receive a hefty fine for data protection offences, public sector organisations like ACRO receive a public reprimand from the ICO rather than receive a fine that confiscates public funds.
At the time of writing, the data has not yet appeared on any cybercrime forums or underground chat channels. The use of an open source tool like Mimikatz combined with SQL injection attacks indicates a likely opportunistic adversary rather than a stealthy cyber-espionage operation. However, both cybercriminal and nation state groups are known for opportunistic attacks. Current attribution for who or what was responsible this breach remains uncertain from an open source intelligence (OSINT) perspective.
On a positive note, the ICO highlighted that ACRO’s network segmentation effectively prevented the threat actor from pivoting from the compromised web environment into core policing systems. This containment significantly reduced the scale of harm and demonstrates the immense value of architectural defense-in-depth strategies. Following the breach, ACRO has migrated its portal to the Salesforce Experience Cloud for automated patching and hotfixes and implemented a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system to improve visibility.
Defensive Takeaways
Establish Clear Accountability for Patching: Organisations must have a documented patching policy with clearly defined ownership, especially for public-facing web applications and Content Management Systems (CMS). Ambiguity in IT governance directly leads to unpatched vulnerabilities which then get exploited.
Implement Structured Alert Monitoring: Deploying antivirus or Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions alone is insufficient if alerts are not actively monitored and investigated. It is recommended to establish either structured internal processes or an outsourced 24/7 Managed Detection and Response (MDR) or SOC service to review and respond to critical security alerts promptly.
Maintain Robust Network Segmentation: Ensure that public-facing web infrastructure is strictly segmented from internal corporate networks and core operational systems. As demonstrated in this incident, strict segmentation is a crucial control for stopping an attacker's lateral movement.
Ensure Adequate Log Retention: Insufficient logging severely hinders incident response and forensic investigations. Implement comprehensive logging policies and utilise a SIEM to aggregate logs, ensuring they are retained long enough to accurately determine the scope of data exfiltration during a compromise.
What HappenedRecent operational successes by UK law enforcement have exposed sophisticated domestic carding networks and the growing threat of youth-targeted money muling syndicates.In June 2026, a major cross-border investigation concluded with the sentencing of a serial fraudster who targeted small businesses, including veterinary clinics and hotels, across 22 different counties in England and Wales.The individual executed over 64 frauds and two thefts, accumulating losses totalling £462,000.
Recent operational successes by UK law enforcement have exposed sophisticated domestic carding networks and the growing threat of youth-targeted money muling syndicates.
In June 2026, a major cross-border investigation concluded with the sentencing of a serial fraudster who targeted small businesses, including veterinary clinics and hotels, across 22 different counties in England and Wales.
The individual executed over 64 frauds and two thefts, accumulating losses totalling £462,000. The threat actor utilised stolen payment card details to buy goods and explicitly manipulating transaction values to inflate the amounts charged before requesting rapid refunds directly into bank accounts under his control.
Following his arrest, investigators seized an array of high-value items, including designer clothing and mobile devices. Financial telemetry revealed the illicit proceeds were being spent on luxury goods, gambling, hotels, and vehicle hire. Crucially, investigators uncovered an expansive network of money mule accounts specifically set up to layer and obfuscate the stolen funds.
Separately, regional policing teams executed a series of targeted strikes aimed directly at these types of laundering networks, resulting in the arrest of three men (aged 18, 22, and 26) on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and for money laundering, along with the seizure of £14,000 in cash.
Law enforcement issued a stark warning following the raids, noting an aggressive operational shift where organised crime groups (OCGs) are actively leveraging social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, alongside popular online gaming ecosystems, to systematically recruit young teenagers into mule networks.
Analyst Comment
This twin set of enforcement actions illustrates the complete lifecycle of a modern domestic fraud operation. The acquisition and monetisation of stolen data (also known as Carding), followed by the immediate mobilisation of a decentralised laundering infrastructure (also known as Money Muling). The carding scheme highlighted in the 22-county campaign demonstrates that threat actors are moving away from simple e-commerce checkout abuse and are instead focusing on the operational blind spots of small, brick-and-mortar or service-oriented businesses.
By manipulating transaction values and exploiting refund protocols, the fraudster successfully weaponised point-of-sale or card-not-present (CNP) systems to manufacture clean cash flows. However, the scale of this carding activity requires a highly liquid laundering pipeline to survive traditional banking fraud detection. This is where the recruitment of money mules becomes a vital asset for OCGs.
The pivot toward social media, such as Snapchat and Instagram as well as online gaming platforms to recruit teenage money mules is a calculated tactic by syndicates.
Young demographics are highly susceptible to social media advertisements that mask the severe criminal realities of money laundering, framing it instead as a quick, victimless side-hustle. Many young people do not understand that allowing someone to route funds through their personal bank account is a serious criminal offense that can result in first-party fraud markers (such as a CIFAS marker), effectively destroying their financial future before it begins.
Further, a widespread lack of proactive parental supervision, combined with missing or unconfigured digital parental controls on mobile devices and gaming accounts, allows recruiters to directly message minors entirely undetected.
Defensive Takeaways
Harden Refund Protocols for Small Businesses: Businesses in vulnerable service sectors must enforce strict multi-factor verification for all card-not-present transactions and mandate that any processed refunds should only return to the exact card used for the initial purchase.
Proactive Parental Monitoring & Platform Safety: Parents must actively utilise device level and application-specific parental controls on social media and gaming networks. Conversations regarding digital safety must expand past cyberbullying to include the tactical red flags of financial grooming and "easy cash" offers.
Targeted School and Community Education: Educational institutions and financial bodies should collaborate more often on mandatory cyber-hygiene campaigns that explicitly outline the legal penalties of money muling, illustrating how a compromised bank account can permanently restrict access to student loans, mobile contracts, and future employment.
What HappenedNew data published by the City of London Police in June 2026 reveals that courier fraud losses exceeded £21 million in 2025, with individuals aged over 70 being heavily targeted. The highest concentration of these offenses was recorded in London and the Home Counties.Cybercriminals and fraud syndicates are actively evolving their operational tactics, increasingly pivoting to messaging platforms like WhatsApp to contact their victims and remotely paying for third-party courier servic
New data published by the City of London Police in June 2026 reveals that courier fraud losses exceeded £21 million in 2025, with individuals aged over 70 being heavily targeted. The highest concentration of these offenses was recorded in London and the Home Counties.
Cybercriminals and fraud syndicates are actively evolving their operational tactics, increasingly pivoting to messaging platforms like WhatsApp to contact their victims and remotely paying for third-party courier services to facilitate physical collections.
UK law enforcement also highlighted a dangerous shift in 2025 toward high-value physical goods. Victims are being systematically manipulated into visiting multiple jewellers over an extended period to purchase gold and expensive jewellery, which they then hand directly to fraud couriers.
Recent operational crackdowns by UK Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) showcase the nationwide scale of these networks:
North West ROCU Operations (July 2026): Police executed coordinated search warrants in Huddersfield and Manchester, arresting two men (aged 21 and 25) on suspicion of Conspiracy to Defraud and Money Laundering. In this specific series, the suspects impersonated bank fraud departments, convinced a victim her card was compromised, sent a courier to collect it, and immediately exploit the physical card to make numerous fraudulent transactions.
North East ROCU (NEROCU) Sentencing (June 2026): A complex, cross-country courier fraud operation spanning March to May 2022 concluded with a prison sentence for a primary operative. The network targeted 14 separate victims, convincing them to hand over physical bank cards and PIN numbers under the guise of an internal "investigation" by their bank's fraud department. The group scammed a total of £56,000, which was then rapidly laundered through the high street purchase of smartphones, designer clothing, and luxury jewellery.
Analyst Comment
Courier fraud is effectively a hybrid cyber-physical social engineering campaign. While the final phase relies on a physical courier arriving at a victim’s doorstep, the initial approach relies heavily on psychological manipulation and email, message, or phone call-based deception.
This type of fraud is notable as it follows a structured cybercriminal playbook that bypasses detection systems and takes advantage of the vulnerable in society. The victim is instructed to bypass normal banking security controls by withdrawing cash, disclosing sensitive credentials (like PINs), or purchasing high-value physical commodities like gold or luxury jewellery. This makes it difficult to proactively detect and prevent.
The other concerning factor is the couriers themselves. According to reports, they can be an unwitting third-party courier service that is paid to go to the victim's home to collect the assets. Online services enable cybercriminals to organise these pickups remotely, lowering their risk of being caught.
The £21 million sizeable loss metric from 2025 shows how profitable this low-tech, high manipulation vector remains. The recent shift to targeting gold and luxury jewellery is a deliberate evasion tactic against traditional anti-money laundering (AML) and banking fraud detection algorithms. While banks have grown adept at flagging unusual rapid bank transfers, they cannot easily stop an account holder from physically withdrawing funds or using a card over several days at different brick-and-mortar luxury retailers. This tactic serves as a highly liquid physical laundering pipeline for these syndicates that remains a challenge to prevent.
Defensive Takeaways
Implement Bank Transfer and Purchase Outlier Alerts: Financial institutions can focus on further behavioural monitoring for elderly demographics, looking specifically for sudden, consecutive high-value transactions at physical luxury retail or jewellery establishments and flag patterns on unusual activity for review.
Public Awareness on Cross-Media Scams: Security awareness campaigns must make it clear that legitimate institutions, specifically the Police and Banking Fraud teams, will never send a courier to a residential address to collect cash, PIN numbers, bank cards, or purchased items.
Vetting of Courier Logistics: Commercial courier services are increasingly being abused as infrastructure by these threat groups. Logistics firms must implement logging and analysis systems to detect unusual residential pickups booked via suspicious accounts and forged identities.
What HappenedThroughout H1 2026, the Qilin ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) Tor data leak site (DLS) listed the most UK-based victims out of all ransomware gangs, with up to 37 British organisations hit in total. Qilin's victim count is followed by DragonForce with 21 victims listed, and TheGentlemen with 18 listed.The fallout from the Qilin attack on the UK National Health Service (NHS) supplier, Synnovis, in 2024 persists as well. On 1 June 2026, the Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Throughout H1 2026, the Qilin ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) Tor data leak site (DLS) listed the most UK-based victims out of all ransomware gangs, with up to 37 British organisations hit in total. Qilin's victim count is followed by DragonForce with 21 victims listed, and TheGentlemen with 18 listed.
The fallout from the Qilin attack on the UK National Health Service (NHS) supplier, Synnovis, in 2024 persists as well. On 1 June 2026, the Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trustdisclosed that over 32,000 patient data records related to Synnovis tests were exfiltrated and took over a year to analyse what information was related to which patient. The breached data includes patient name and number, date of birth, postcode, and test results.
In H1 2026, Qilin averaged between seven and nine published UK victims per month. For the entries listing an estimated attack date, there was a roughly six-week extortion lifecycle on average, from initial intrusion to the date the victim is publicly named.
This UK footprint highlights their aggressive pursuit of Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as most organisations had a revenue between £10m and £250m.
Interestingly, one of the Qilin victims, Salford City College, also appeared on both the Qilin and DragonForce Tor data leak site (DLS) only a few days apart from 6 March to 10 March 2026, respectively.
Qilin’s UK-based victims from H1 2026 spanned a diverse range of sectors:
Construction & Property Development
Manufacturing & Engineering
Legal & Professional Services
Technology & IT Infrastructure
Education
Healthcare
Analyst Comment
Many of the organisations targeted by Qilin operators are just large enough to have the funds to pay mid-tier ransoms but often never got around to making an investment into a 24/7 dedicated threat detection service, such as an outsourced Security Operations Centre (SOC). Such services are usually enough protection to prevent an attack. If a ransomware affiliate faces tough resistance from a target, they often move on to a weaker and easier one.
One key face to also note about Tor data leak sites operated by ransomware groups is that they include victims who failed to pay the ransom. The total number of victims by each group is often going to be higher.
The reason for the cross-posting of Salford City College is unknown for now. However, it could indicate that an affiliate may be using both Qilin and DragonForce RaaS platforms. An alternative theory could be that the college was hit by two affiliates of each RaaS. Interestingly, cross-posting on multiple leak sites is not as uncommon as it seems. Some victims listed on the Qilin leak site have historically appeared on the leak sites of ALPHV/BlackCat and Conti as well.
The Ransomware Vulnerability Matrix Group Profile for Qilin reveals a diverse set of exploits leveraged by its operators. Like many other ransomware gangs, Qilin operators have exploited corporate VPN gateways such as Fortinet, Check Point, and WatchGuard for initial access. Interestingly, the exploitation of SmarterTools SmarterMail and SolarWinds Web Help Desk is less common but are also exploited by the Warlock ransomware gang. Another common theme from Qilin's Ransomware Tool Matrix Group Profile is their regular abuse of Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) tactics to bypass Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Antivirus software.
Defensive Takeaways
Harden Common Attack Paths: Treat any web-facing helpdesk or mail server as a high-risk device. If it does not absolutely require open internet access, place it behind a zero-trust network access gateway or a strict VPN. Enforce strict phishing-resistant Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on all remote access points. Ensure processes are in place for rapid patching and integrity checks for all corporate VPN gateways.
Overcoming SME Resource Caps: Organisations must bridge the gap with an outsourced MDR service. Ransomware execution routinely happens at 2:00 AM on Fridays and weekends. Outdated antivirus agents alone are not enough to stop a motivated human adversary.
Utilise Free Support Services:Capitalise on sovereign and community-vetted threat intelligence feeds to block attacker infrastructure early. UK defenders should actively enroll in the National Cyber Security Centre’s MyNCSC portal and integrate community resources like the Spamhaus DROP list and Abuse.ch tracking into their perimeter firewalls to automatically block known ransomware command-and-control (C2) nodes. ShadowServer and Team Cymru also offer useful free community resources.
What HappenedHMRC Issues Warning to TikTok UsersOn 4 June 2026, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) uncovered a suspected £153 million tax fraud scam involving TikTok.The scheme allegedly involved individuals posting advertisements on the TikTok, enticing users to hand over sensitive tax information, including business VAT registration details or personal self-assessment credentials for a financial reward.Using the stolen tax details, the fraudsters could file bogus repayment requests with HMRC.The wa
On 4 June 2026, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) uncovered a suspected £153 million tax fraud scam involving TikTok.
The scheme allegedly involved individuals posting advertisements on the TikTok, enticing users to hand over sensitive tax information, including business VAT registration details or personal self-assessment credentials for a financial reward.
Using the stolen tax details, the fraudsters could file bogus repayment requests with HMRC.
The warning comes after two Romanian men, aged 22 and 25, were apprehended by HMRC officers in east London on 23 April 2026 in connection with the alleged fraud.
Lloyds Bank found Two Thirds of Fraud Cases Started on Meta
On 6 June 2026, Liz Ziegler, the Lloyds fraud prevention director disclosed that 68% of fraud reports from their customers started on a Meta platform, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The average claim value submitted to Lloyds Bank is now above £500, an increase of about £100 from last year. Plus, victims were sending up to £66 million a year to fraudsters after falling victim to a scam advert via Meta, up from £27 million in 2023.
The most common scams involve fake tickets for concerts, festivals and sporting events. Meta’s Facebook Marketplace is also plagued by fake adverts for cars, bikes, campervans and mobility vehicles.
Other categories of fraud on Meta platforms, collected by Lloyds between March 2025 and 2026, include: wedding photobooths, tattoo deposits, vapes, wigs, Moncler jackets, football shirts, Dyson products and Amazon Alexas. Fraudulent transactions for deposits for flats, mobile phones, household furniture and gym equipment have also been observed.
UK Finance Recorded £221.5m Lost to Investment Scams
In June 2026, UK Finance's Annual Fraud Report recorded the highest loss total ever recorded and the highest total number of cases ever reported at 14,893, which was 26% higher than 2025.
Up to £221.5m was lost to scams in which victims were persuaded to transfer funds to a fake investment or fictitious fund. This figure also marked a 40% rise more than 2025.
The primary observed tactics involved in investment scams include traditional cold calling to pressurise victims into acting quickly to claim an opportunity before it expires, as well as adverts on social media offering unrealistic rates of returns on investments, and hand-delivered letters.
The types of investments fraudsters used as bait in 2026 involved gold, property, carbon credits, cryptocurrencies, land banks, and wine.
Fraudsters arrested in Nigeria following NCA intelligence sharing
In February 2026, the National Crime Agency (NCA) announced that seven men were arrested in Nigeria after intelligence identified an online investment scam compound targeting UK victims. These arrests were the result of co-operation between the National Crime Agency, Meta and the Nigerian Police.
Using hundreds of fake Facebook accounts accounts to impersonate cryptocurrency traders, the Nigeria-based scammers targeted people who used legitimate investment platforms.
The scam compound was also allegedly recruiting and training young people in targeting victims for future investment frauds and phishing attacks. A total of 26 phones, 42 sim cards and a laptop were seized on 13 January.
Analyst Comment
H1 2026 reinforces the transition from email-centric fraud campaigns to social-media-powered fraud operations, with platforms increasingly serving as the primary source of victims for organised cybercriminal groups. Fraudsters are also adapting scams to the culture and user behaviour of individual platforms, such as generate short promotional videos on TikTok or listing fake items for sale on Facebook Marketplace. Rather than deploying identical scams everywhere, criminals tailor campaigns to the platform's intended purpose. Recommendation algorithms and advertising ecosystems provide fraudsters with scalable victim acquisition channels that were previously unavailable through traditional phishing campaigns.
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) has also meant it is much easier for cybercriminals to carry out scams on a much larger scale than they were previously able to. Autonomous systems can enable them to send out messages at scale and contact users by telephone at scale. Plus the scam attempts are also more convincing as they can mimic voices and appearance of celebrities or even a target’s friends and family.
The scale of fraudulent activities across social media is so large, it requires vast resources and expertise to monitor, detect, and prevent. At the same time, the response from HMRC, banks, social media companies, the NCA, and international law enforcement suggests increasing recognition that combating social media fraud requires coordinated action.
The volume of fake accounts on social media used for scams does also validate the calls for increased verification and security checks on such platforms. The UK Government's proposal to introduce a national digital ID system, however, was met with fierce opposition. Up to 2.9 million people signed a UK parliament petition to show their disagreement with such a system.
Defensive Takeaways
Reduce Public Exposure: Fraudsters increasingly use information shared on social media to personalise scams and identify potential victims. Consider making profiles private or limiting visibility to trusted contacts and if you no longer actively use a social media platform, consider deleting the account entirely.
Be on Guard for Scams: Sponsored advertisements should not automatically be considered legitimate. Refuse any financial rewards in exchange for your login credentials. Be cautious of investment opportunities promoted solely through social media. Assume Facebook Marketplace listings can be fraudulent.
Report Suspicious Activity: Reporting scams helps remove fraudulent content and supports law enforcement investigations. Useful UK reporting channels include Report Fraud and the UK NCSC's Suspicious Email Reporting Service report@phishing.gov.uk.
Seek Support after a Scam: Victims should not assume financial losses are unrecoverable. It can be possible to get funds returned if they contact their bank immediately, preserve screenshots and transactions records, and report the incident to Report Fraud. Further, if a victim is dissatisfied with how their bank handled their case, they can complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
IntroductionThe modern cyber threat landscape has seen a fundamental shift in how threat actors manage and deploy their infrastructure. Advanced persistent threats (APTs) have almost completely moved away from static command-and-control (C2) servers, opting instead to build complex, multi-layered botnets known as Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks. Project ORBITAL (which stands for Operational Relay Box Intelligence, Tracking, & Analysis Lexicon) was established as a centralised intelligen
The modern cyber threat landscape has seen a fundamental shift in how threat actors manage and deploy their infrastructure. Advanced persistent threats (APTs) have almost completely moved away from static command-and-control (C2) servers, opting instead to build complex, multi-layered botnets known as Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks.
Project ORBITAL (which stands for Operational Relay Box Intelligence, Tracking, & Analysis Lexicon) was established as a centralised intelligence matrix to track, analyse, and ultimately help defenders disrupt this highly evasive infrastructure.
To construct these networks, adversaries systematically compromise unpatched, end-of-life devices. By targeting legacy, unpatched Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) router and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices attackers can create a sprawling, decentralised mesh of proxy nodes. By routing their operations through layers of compromised devices, adversaries mask their true origins, making malicious activity blend seamlessly with legitimate regional traffic.
Blogs by my colleagues at Team Cymru as well as Google offer detailed explanations as to why and how these ORBs have grown over many years and continue to expand.
Project Background
Project ORBITAL represents a centralised Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) collection driven by public reporting from advanced research teams across the cybersecurity and technology sectors. This initiative aggregates telemetry and findings from top-tier vendors including Cisco Talos, CrowdStrike, Google, GreyNoise Labs, Lumen Black Lotus Labs, Microsoft, SecurityScorecard, Sekoia, SentinelLabs, Sygnia, and Team Cymru. Furthermore, it incorporates critical alerts and intelligence shared publicly by United States government agencies, specifically the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), and the National Security Agency (NSA).
This repository builds on the methodology of my previous OSINT tracking initiatives. It is heavily inspired by the structure and community success of my earlier matrix projects, specifically the Ransomware Tool Matrix (RTM) (here), the Ransomware Vulnerability Matrix (RVM) (here), and the Russian APT Tool Matrix (RUTM) (here). By applying a similar, structured approach to mapping Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks, this project aims to provide defenders with a clear, actionable lexicon for hunting and tracking evasive edge-device botnets.
Graph Visualisation
Once Project ORBITAL was initially assembled, it was then possible to use a GitHub Action automation with NetworkX and PyVis to create a Graph Visualisation using the data collected. Once in this view, some interesting patterns could be observed.
Analysis of the extracted data uncovered that ASUS devices were the most targeted out of all of the targeted devices by ORBs from the public reports.
Another interesting point the graph highlighted is that the LapDogs ORB network had the highest number of reported targeted devices.
In most reported scenarios, a singular threat group used a dedicated ORB network. However, from extracting the details from the Google and SentinelLabs reports, an adversary like APT15, reportedly leverages both SPACEHOP and PurpleHaze ORB networks, alongside two other separate adversaries UNC2630 and UNC5174.
The overlap in ORB usage suggests these APTs aren't all building their own botnets from scratch. These overlaps likely indicate there are provisioning teams, such as specialised contractors, like Beijing Integrity Tech, who build and maintain these ORB networks and then lease access to the broader Chinese intelligence community in the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Panda-monium
Below is the list of well-known China-nexus APTs listed using CrowdStrike’s naming scheme and their Google or Microsoft aliases that are all mentioned in Project ORBITAL.
CAULDRON PANDA (aka UNC3886)
ETHEREAL PANDA (aka Flax Typhoon)
JUDGMENT PANDA (APT31, Violet Typhoon)
KEYHOLE PANDA (aka UNC2630, APT5)
MURKY PANDA (aka Silk Typhoon)
VANGUARD PANDA (aka Volt Typhoon)
VIXEN PANDA (aka APT15, Nylon Typhoon)
The most notable aspect about this list is that it contains APTs with wildly different mandates. VANGUARD PANDA (Volt Typhoon) is famous for pre-positioning within critical infrastructure with the potential disruptive attacks, while KEYHOLE PANDA (APT5) and JUDGMENT PANDA (APT31) are long-running cyber-espionage and IP theft operators. The fact that both the saboteurs and the spies have all adopted ORB networks goes to show that this tactic is not niche but instead is the baseline standard for Chinese APT operational security (OPSEC).
How to Access
You can find Project ORBITAL on my GitHub repository below:
What HappenedNemesis Dark Web Drug Dealers ArrestedOn 14 May 2026, two Cambridgeshire drug dealers were sentenced after being arrested in July 2024 by the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU).ERSOU officers recovered Royal Mail parcel labels, order lists, Gorgonites-branded packaging, and a USB memory stick containing login credentials for multiple dark web marketplace accounts.The dealers reportedly used the dark web to supply heroin, cocaine, and amphetamine to hundreds of users acro
On 14 May 2026, two Cambridgeshire drug dealers were sentenced after being arrested in July 2024 by the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU).
ERSOU officers recovered Royal Mail parcel labels, order lists, Gorgonites-branded packaging, and a USB memory stick containing login credentials for multiple dark web marketplace accounts.
The dealers reportedly used the dark web to supply heroin, cocaine, and amphetamine to hundreds of users across the UK.
The drug deals were initially arranged via a Telegram channel under the handle Gorgonites, which was linked to at least 570 individual sales on Nemesis Market since September 2023.
AEGIS Dark Web Drug Market Seizure
On 17 March 2026, the London Metropolitan Police’s Cyber Crime Unit announced the seizure of AEGIS Marketplace.
In June 2025, the Met Cyber Crime Unit became aware of AEGIS Marketplace, which was a site where individual sellers could market drugs for sale to users who could make purchases using cryptocurrency.
By March 2026, the website had 30 active sellers and was estimated to have generated 10,000 drug sales in ten months, leading to an estimated annual turnover of almost £2 million.
Officers from the Met managed to infiltrate the site, retrieving server data that led to the identification of administrators, sellers and customers.
Online Killers Marketplace (OKM) Admins Arrested
On 19 January 2026, two suspects were arrested in Romania as part of an ERSOU investigation into a bogus ‘harm-for-hire’ website which offered services including murder.
The arrests were connected to a dark web scam website called Online Killers Marketplace (OKM), which purported to facilitate criminal activities including the hiring of hitmen and extortion.
ERSOU noted that even though none of the services OKM offered were genuine, successful prosecutions have previously been pursued by police forces of individuals attempting to use it to cause harm to others.
The investigation led to the seizure of US crypto currency worth at least $600,000, as well as cash which included almost €50,000 Euros, and around £48,000 worth of Romanian Leu.
Analyst Comment
The anonymity and connectivity of encrypted messaging apps, the Tor network, cryptocurrency, and online marketplaces makes it nearly impossible to prevent such crime. However, law enforcement can achieve strategic containment by targeting specific infrastructure for seizure and individuals for arrest. These activities support the overall strategy for national law enforcement agencies is to deter criminals from being active in their country.
Telegram is increasingly used as a front-end service for all sorts of cybercrime activities. As seen in the Nemesis investigation, the dealers operated a Telegram channel under the handle Gorgonites to coordinate and funnel buyers toward more secure transactions. It is an easy-to-use mobile application that makes access to such illicit services simple for buyers. It is more accessible than having to download the Tor browser and use a desktop or laptop browser. Many of these illicit services also would not exist without cryptocurrency. The ability to send funds via peer-to-peer networks and obfuscate transactions continues to be the main enabling factor for most cybercrime operations.
Interestingly, the sole administrator of Nemesis Market was sanctioned in March 2025 by the US Treasury OFAC department. The admin was an Iran-based individual named Behrouz Parsarad. Prior to its takedown by law enforcement in March 2024, Nemesis had over 30,000 active users and 1,000 vendors and facilitated the sale of nearly $30 million USD worth of drugs around the world between 2021 and 2024.
Defensive Takeaways
Blockchain Analytics:While cryptocurrency provides a layer of perceived anonymity for illicit markets it also leaves a permanent, public ledger. Law enforcement and threat intelligence firms, such as TRM Labs and Chainalysis, can leverage blockchain analytics to follow the money and deanonymise the administrators. By mapping transaction inputs and outputs, investigators can trace mixed funds, identify exchanges used to cash out into fiat currency, and map the financial infrastructure of a marketplace.
Breach Data Pivoting: To catch these cybercriminals, threat intelligence analysts can use historical breach data repositories to pivot from a known dark web alias or leaked credential to find a real-world identity. If an administrator used the same password or a variation of a username on a compromised gaming forum ten years ago, that footprint can blow their operational security (OPSEC).
Profile Scraping: Dark web vendors and market admins often leave massive digital footprints across forums, marketplaces, and messaging apps like Telegram. Continuous profile scraping can be achieve via automated bots to collect vendor profiles, feedback ratings, PGP keys, styles of writing (stylometry), and active hours. By aggregating this data over time, defenders can create a comprehensive profile of a target and identify them.
Dark Web Market Sock Puppet Accounts: Law enforcement and threat intelligence analysts can deploy sock puppets accounts, which are undercover, synthetic personas, into these dark web ecosystems. These accounts are kept for long periods of time and actively posting in an attempt to build trust within the cybercrime underground. Investigators can use them to buy products, interact with admins, and gain access to private vendor portals or escrow systems to support evidence gathering for a takedown.
Infrastructure Analysis: As dark web markets rely on servers, hosting providers, DNS, and Tor is is possible to analyse these attributes and look for configuration mistakes. This can include exposed IP addresses, trackable X509 certificates, or open port banners that reveal the true location of a hidden service. Once a server's true IP is uncovered, law enforcement can issue subpoenas to hosting providers or execute physical raids to seize the hardware and unmask administrators, vendors, and buyer databases.
What HappenedOn 9 June 2026, the University of Nottingham was listed as a victim on the ShinyHunters Tor data leak site.The attackers leaked over 40GB of billing and payment records, student finance data, and campus portal exports from the University of Nottingham and its Malaysia and China campuses.The data stolen includes contact information, transaction amounts, IP addresses, full names, home addresses, postcodes, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and other internal campus data.
On 9 June 2026, the University of Nottingham was listed as a victim on the ShinyHunters Tor data leak site.
The attackers leaked over 40GB of billing and payment records, student finance data, and campus portal exports from the University of Nottingham and its Malaysia and China campuses.
The data stolen includes contact information, transaction amounts, IP addresses, full names, home addresses, postcodes, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and other internal campus data.
Further analysis of the leaked data by Have I Been Pwned revealed it also contained over 455,000 unique email addresses along with extensive personal information including ethnicities, disabilities, and passport numbers.
On 10 June 2026, security researcher @nahamike01 uncovered an exposed server belonging to ShinyHunters and found them targeting Oracle PeopleSoft servers using MeshCentral agents. Plus, analysis the bash_history logs on the server uncovered SSH connections to the IP address hosting the ShinyHunters Tor data leak site.
On 11 June 2026, Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) disclosed they have observed active compromise and extortion campaign attributed to UNC6240 (ShinyHunters) targeting Oracle PeopleSoft application infrastructure via a zero-day now tracked as CVE-2026-35273, a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability (CVSS 9.8).
Analyst Comment ShinyHunters is a prolific feature of current threat landscape. This adversary appears to have a particular focus on the educational sector. Last month in May 2026, ShinyHunters targeted another provider of educational software: Instructure Canvas. A number of other UK universities were also impacted by the Instructure breach.
The education sector in the US and UK has suffered repeated, significant data breaches in recent years. In January 2025, BleepingComputer reported that PowerSchools, a cloud-based software provider, suffered a breach whereby the data of 62.4 million students and 9.5 million teachers was exfiltrated. Also in June 2026, the University of Oxford also disclosed a data breach impacting its CareerConnect platform. Separately, 13 schools in Powys county in Wales were impacted by a data breach in April 2026.
After the Oracle E-Business Suite zero-day campaign by CLOP in October 2025, this campaign by ShinyHunters against Oracle PeopleSoft is yet another blow for Oracle. Google identified over 100 exposed organisations, and noted that 68% are academic institutions, including universities and colleges worldwide. More are likely to have been victimised by ShinyHunters and listed on their Tor data leak site in the coming weeks.
Defensive Takeaways
Patch Oracle PeopleSoft: Internet-facing applications, such as file transfer servers or cloud-based software need to be prioritised for patches and updates. Checking the integrity of such systems while patching is also key to finding undetected compromises. Proactively ingesting event logs and threat hunting for suspicious activities involving these systems is also key to prevent breaches.
Prioritise Education Software Security: Education sector firms or cybersecurity companies with education sector clients must react to the elevated threat, by pen-testing, threat hunting, and threat intelligence sharing. Cybercriminal adversaries like ShinyHunters often exploit internet-facing applications or use stolen credentials for initial access. It is therefore critical to focus on these tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to prevent their attacks.
Follow the Data Breach Alert Playbook: Impacted victims must begin to rotate credentials, and start the laborious task of requesting new identity documents and codes like national insurance numbers or passports. It is also worth investing in some credit monitoring services as well to prevent loans being taken out in your name.
What HappenedOfficers from the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit (DCPCU), jointly run by the London Met Police and City of London Police, secured the conviction of a man who used an SMS Blaster device to send fraudulent text messages as part of an organised criminal operation in London.The conviction relates to an investigation that previously led to the sentencing of Ruichen Xiong in July 2025, who was apprehended while driving a vehicle in North London as the device was in operation. Duri
Officers from the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit (DCPCU), jointly run by the London Met Police and City of London Police, secured the conviction of a man who used an SMS Blaster device to send fraudulent text messages as part of an organised criminal operation in London.
The conviction relates to an investigation that previously led to the sentencing of Ruichen Xiong in July 2025, who was apprehended while driving a vehicle in North London as the device was in operation. During that incident, officers in the vicinity received fraudulent text messages purporting to be from HMRC.
Ruichen Xiong was a student from China who drove around London using the SMS Blaster between 22 and 27 March 2025, sending messages to tens of thousands of potential victims.
Following Xiong’s arrest and subsequent conviction, enquiries identified another individual called Di Li who was a key organiser. Li facilitated Xiong’s involvement by arranging access to the device, assisting with obtaining a vehicle, and supporting his day-to-day living costs.
Xiong had accrued significant gambling debts after arriving in the UK as a student. To pay off his debts, Li instructed that he could repay what he owed by driving routes in a car with the SMS Blaster.
On 20 August 2025, officers searched Li’s home address, where digital evidence was recovered showing communications between Li and Xiong relating to the deployment of the SMS blaster. Li was arrested on 1 September 2025 and charged with offences linked to the operation.
At the court trial, Li’s defence was that the device was intended for “advertising” purposes and described himself as a middleman acting on behalf of an individual based in China. He maintained that he had been merely attempting to help Xiong repay his debts.
Analyst Comment
An SMS Blaster acts as a portable mobile phone mast that forces nearby mobile devices to connect to it by silently downgrading it to 2G while they try to connect to 5G or LTE. By doing so, criminals can bypass safeguards designed to block malicious senders and harmful links, enabling them to deliver fraudulent messages directly to victims nearby without needing their phone numbers. The SMS Blaster allow an operator to customise all aspects of the messages, so they can make it look like it has come from a genuine organisation like HMRC, the UK tax authority.
SMS Blasters are a relatively new technology for scammers. Police in the UK only encountered them for the first time in 2025, but they have been used in other parts of the world. SMS Blaster are also a type of IMSI catcher that mirrors the capability of law enforcement tools such as a Stingray.
When used in busy metropolitan areas, they allow criminals to easily send out SMS phishing messages to hundreds of people at a time. These SMS messages typically have a malicious link that host scam websites that trick victims into entering their personal details. These details can then used by fraudsters to make payments, steal funds, or resell it to others.
This report also highlights the concerning trend of organised cybercrime gangs from China are actively hunting for individuals who are financially vulnerable (like students with gambling debts) to conduct high-risk in-person operations.
Defensive Takeaways
Block and Report: If you receive a suspicious text message, do not engage with it. Instead, forward it to 7726, a free reporting service, and block the number.
Move Away from SMS: If your organisation relies on SMS for One-Time Passcodes (OTPs), this threat highlights that the SMS sender ID can be perfectly spoofed locally. Organisations should migrate to authenticator apps, hardware tokens, or application push notifications to avoid spoofing.
Proactive Takedown Programs: Since the attack relies on hosting malicious links to harvest credentials, defenders can perform proactive domain monitoring. Detecting and taking down lookalike domains immediately minimises the impact.
What HappenedOn 3 June 2026, the City of London Police issued a warning stating Report Fraud has seen a significant increase in cases mentioning the retailer, reflecting how criminals are targeting well-known brands.Report Fraud, which is run by the City of London Police, warned that cybercriminals are using leaked credentials from historical data breaches to hijack Argos user accounts.Once on the account, the fraudsters order and then collect the goods in-person at a physical store. In some ins
On 3 June 2026, the City of London Police issued a warning stating Report Fraud has seen a significant increase in cases mentioning the retailer, reflecting how criminals are targeting well-known brands.
Report Fraud, which is run by the City of London Police, warned that cybercriminals are using leaked credentials from historical data breaches to hijack Argos user accounts.
Once on the account, the fraudsters order and then collect the goods in-person at a physical store. In some instances, the goods are paid for using payment details not connected to the victim of the compromised account.
Notably, the goods from fraudulent orders are often claimed via Click & Collect option that Argos allows, enabling the threat actors to retrieve goods in store.
In May, Report Fraud received 652 reports which mention Argos, a 323% increase compared to April, when 154 reports mentioning the retailer were made. Since the start of 2026, there have been 1,175 reports mentioning the retailer, with May seeing the highest number to date.
This alert is also not the first raised about Argos. On 18 November 2025, the East Midlands Cyber Resilience Center issued a warning about Argos and Currys accounts getting compromised and unauthorised purchases being made. In some instances, particularly with Currys, the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) option was used, leaving the account holder with finance plans in their names.
Analyst Comment
For both everyday UK consumers and UK retail risk teams, these alerts provide several layered insights. Retailers have spent years optimising Click & Collect to be as frictionless as possible to compete with online shopping giants like Amazon. However, this alert shows how Click & Collect can be a security liability. As Argos allows quick collections, criminals can buy an item online and pick it up at a local store before the real account owner notices an order confirmation email.
The police alerts also note that the items may even be paid for using payment details not connected to the victim.Criminals are mixing stolen accounts with stolen credit cards. This is likely due to an established Argos account with a multi-year history buying expensive items would look pretty normal to a fraud detection engines.
The combination of an Account Takeover (ATO) and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) fraud creates a difficult scenario for retailers, credit providers, and consumers. The regulatory and reputational fallout for a retailer under the rules of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) could be severe. If a retailer's poor account security allows fraudsters to easily spin up a finance plan in a victim's name, the FCA will view this as a systemic failure to protect consumers, resulting in massive fines.
These attacks are possible due to the practice of Argos users who are reusing the same previously leaked password across multiple accounts, plus users not having multi-factor authentication (MFA) turned on in their account settings.
Campaigns like this can trigger a reputational hit to retailers as victims often do not suffer silently. They take to social media to share stories and the public narrative can shift to being about a retailer who is complicit in disrupting innocent people's financial lives.
Defensive Takeaways
User Account Hygiene Best Practices: Standard practices such as rotating passwords, using complex password, using a different password per service, using a password manager, using passkeys, and turning on MFA would all help mitigate this type of threat for users.
Credit Monitoring: If a user suspects their account has been compromised, they should consider using a credit monitoring service to help prevent unauthorised loans taken out in their name.
Cancel and Replace Payment Cards: If a user suspects their payment card data has been stolen, then they should contact their financial institution and have it cancelled and replaced.
Implement Click-and-Collect Controls: Retailers with click-and-click options should introduce controls such as requiring ID of the account owner or a single-use QR code or PIN via SMS/Email at the point of collection for high-value items to prevent this type of fraud.
Detecting Credential Stuff Attacks: If the cybercriminals were using credential stuffing attacks, then retailers should be able to detect unauthorised password guessing attempts against their online portals. It is recommended to use IP context analysis and perform source IP correlation. If one IP address tagged as a proxy or VPN is observed attempting to login to dozens of accounts simultaneously, then there’s an issue.
Leverage Stripe’s FT3 framework: If your organisation or team is tasked with combating fraud, then categorising these scammers TTPs is crucial. That’s why Stripe has developed the Fraud Tools, Tactics, and Techniques (FT3) framework. It’s designed to help security teams understand the landscape, spot gaps, develop detections, improve incident response, and foster collaboration.
What HappenedOver the course of September 2025 to May 2026, Hargreaves Lansdown the UK-based investment platform has been the subject of IT glitches, hacker claims, and technical outages that have triggered rumours and customer concerns.On 11 September 2025, Hargreaves Lansdown customers reported discrepancies in the balances for their pension and ISA accounts, appearing as if huge sums had been mysteriously withdrawn. Customer began to fear they had been “hacked” after they logged onto their ac
Over the course of September 2025 to May 2026, Hargreaves Lansdown the UK-based investment platform has been the subject of IT glitches, hacker claims, and technical outages that have triggered rumours and customer concerns.
On 11 September 2025, Hargreaves Lansdown customers reported discrepancies in the balances for their pension and ISA accounts, appearing as if huge sums had been mysteriously withdrawn. Customer began to fear they had been “hacked” after they logged onto their account and saw their life savings reduced. In less than 24 hours, Hargreaves Lansdown, however, swiftly responded that it was a temporary technical issue that only lasted 45 minutes and all client balances were restored.
On 20 March 2026, Hargreaves Lansdown customers began experiencing technical issues that were affecting some parts of its website and app. The company apologised to customers over IT issues which left them unable to access their accounts during a period of heightened volatility in the financial markets. The company also assured people that there was no evidence of a cyber incident or a data breach and that all customers’ assets and data was secure.
On 27 April 2026, Hargreaves Lansdown (hl.co.uk) was listed as a victim on the Bashe Tor data leak site. The attacker claimed that they allegedly stole their customer database of 658,259 unique users. They then shared five links to their other servers where other Tor users can download the alleged data.
On 8 May 2026, the alleged Hargreaves Lansdown data appeared on DarkForums, a cybercrime forum. From the sample posted, the database offered contains addresses, names, emails, phone numbers, and date of birth. However, no Hargreaves Lansdown customer account numbers or transaction details were included in the sample.
Analyst Comment
Hargreaves Lansdown is the UK's largest direct-to-consumer investment platform, allowing customers to buy and sell investments such as shares, as well as providing financial advice and offering accounts like cash ISAs.
Activesince April 2024, Bashe (aka APT73 or Eraleign) is a cybercriminal group that focuses on data-theft-extortion and ransomware. Analysts at CloudSEK found that APT73 fabricates attacks by falsely claiming responsibility for high-profile breaches, aiming to attract affiliates and bolster its credibility. They are known for taking credit for attacks that either weren’t committed or wasn’t done by them.
Analysis of the sample data posted to DarkForums and the Bashe Tor data leak site revealed it to be purposely selected UK-based user records. Using HaveIBeenPwned to check the email addresses, the DarkForums sample email all appeared inside the Verifications[.]io breach as well as the People Data Labs (PDL) customer breach. This is unusual for recently leaked data and likely points to both the Bashe and DarkForums sharing fake data.
Further, data from a financial trading platform such as Hargreaves Lansdown would be considered highly valuable on the cybercrime underground and could be sold for a high large amount of cryptocurrency. Therefore, it is again unusual for it to be dumped for free on a forum or Tor site. Based on the technical analysis of the leaked data sample and the established behavioural patterns of the threat actor, it is assessed with high confidence that the alleged data breach of Hargreaves Lansdown is entirely fabricated.
It appears Bashe opportunistically weaponised Hargreaves Lansdown’s recent, IT outages and glitches (in September 2025 and March 2026) to construct a plausible, but false, narrative of a successful hack. By capitalising on pre-existing customer anxieties regarding platform stability, these cybercriminals attempted to reinforce their claims and extort their target for a quick ransom.
This incident highlights an evolving trend where threat actors substitute complex technical exploits with psychological manipulation.
Defensive Takeaways
Counter Adversary Threats: To counter this trend, UK firms must integrate their public relations (PR), incident response, and threat intelligence teams. Quick, transparent communication that explicitly decouples internal IT glitches from external cyber threats remains an effective defence against brand-damaging, clout-chasing extortion tactics.
Precautionary Threat Hunting: Even in a fake breach scenario, it is still important to threat hunt for malicious and suspicious activities involved potentially targeted systems to help prove that the alleged data exfiltration never happened. In this scenario, the attacker claimed to have stolen customer database. Therefore, it would be prudent to hunt for any signs of data theft involving systems hosting customer data specifically.
Precautionary Password Resets: In a scenario like this, companies may want to trigger a precautionary customer password reset “just to be on the safe side”. However, credential rotation must be calculated, automated, and decoupled from any fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). If an incident response includes this action, it must be a measured approach. Triggering a mass password reset without tailored communications can unintentionally support the cybercriminals fake breach narrative and could trigger mass panic.
What HappenedThroughout May 2026, affiliates of the DragonForce ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platform claimed seven UK-based companies as its victims by posting them on their Tor data leak site.On 27 May 2026 alone, DragonForce ended the month by posting 22 victims from around the world, four of which were UK-based firms.DragonForce’s UK-based victims from May spanned a diverse range of industries:Professional Services & Talent: Practicus (interim management/executive search)Financial &am
Throughout May 2026, affiliates of the DragonForce ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platform claimed seven UK-based companies as its victims by posting them on their Tor data leak site.
On 27 May 2026 alone, DragonForce ended the month by posting 22 victims from around the world, four of which were UK-based firms.
DragonForce’s UK-based victims from May spanned a diverse range of industries:
Professional Services & Talent: Practicus (interim management/executive search)
Financial & Tax Services: WSM (UK tax advisory)
Infrastructure & Logistics: ERH (traffic management solutions) and Refreshment Systems (vending/logistics)
Heavy Industry/Construction: Arsenal Scaffold
Technology & IT: Helix International (managed enterprise software)
Luxury Retail/Finance: Cult Wines.
Analyst Comment
Active since late 2023, DragonForce remains a persistent cybercriminal threat particularly towards the UK. The recent flurry of disclosures on the DragonForce ransomware Tor data leak site in May highlights a highly active and accelerating threat campaign towards the UK. This diverse range of firms indicates that DragonForce affiliates are largely opportunistic rather than specific. They tend to exploit vulnerabilities or compromised credentials wherever they find them, rather than executing a highly tailored campaign against a single industry or target.
While these companies may not all be household names, some of them will be important suppliers and service providers for their local regions. Helix International in particular is a concern due to them being a managed service provider (MSP) that caters to medium, large, and Fortune 500 companies across various industries, including healthcare, finance, retail, and entertainment.
The Ransomware Vulnerability Matrix Group Profile for DragonForce shows that affiliates are highly adept at targeting edge devices and remote access points, such as Ivanti Connect Secure, Fortinet FortiOS, SonicWall SSL-VPN. A recurring theme across DragonForce's Ransomware Tool Matrix Group Profile is their regular abuse of Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) tactics to bypass Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Antivirus software.
In June 2025, DragonForce made the news as it was used by affiliates, attributed to Scattered Spider, to attack the UK retailers M&S, Co-op, and Harrods in a string of high-profile attacks. More recently, DragonForce has reportedly been actively recruiting on English-speaking cybercrime forums.
Defensive Takeaways
Attack Surface Monitoring: Based on DragonForce’s reported tactics, organisations must review their RDP (Port 3389) exposures as well as any unpatched SSL-VPNs. Prevent these exposures and apply updates as soon as possible. Any brief exposures or time when systems are left unpatched leaves an open window for the adversary to get inside.
Rotate your credentials & implement MFA: It may sound simple, but a lot of these DragonForce incidents have been because of RDP and SSL-VPN account brute forcing. Therefore, the importance of using strong credentials, secure password managers, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled cannot be overstated.
Back Your Data Up: To increase your odds of recovering from a ransomware attack, it’s essential to maintain backups of your business critical data. However, as the DragonForce affiliates are known to target backup solutions like Veeam servers, it’s increasingly important to maintain regularly updated offline backups to be able to restore from.
IntroductionThis blog is a focused update on the latest updates to the Ransomware Tool Matrix (RTM) and the Ransomware Vulnerability Matrix (RVM) covering three groups that I have published profiles for to help defenders home in on the threats most relevant to them: TheGentlemen, DragonForce, and WarLock.Rather than write another broad ecosystem summary, the goal of this post is to introduce these profiles, briefly explain why each group matters right now, and give readers direct links to them
This blog is a focused update on the latest updates to the Ransomware Tool Matrix (RTM) and the Ransomware Vulnerability Matrix (RVM) covering three groups that I have published profiles for to help defenders home in on the threats most relevant to them: TheGentlemen, DragonForce, and WarLock.
Rather than write another broad ecosystem summary, the goal of this post is to introduce these profiles, briefly explain why each group matters right now, and give readers direct links to them so defenders can pivot straight into hunting, detection engineering, and patch prioritisation.
For anyone new to the projects, please read the descriptions on GitHub or feel free to watch my talk explaining the project at BSides London.
Why these three groups?
Each of the three groups added in this update represents a different slice of the current ransomware ecosystem:
TheGentlemen
TheGentlemen is a newer operation that has matured quickly, with a large and varied toolkit that reflects how cross-pollinated the affiliate ecosystem has become. The recent internal chat leak gave researchers a rare look into their tradecraft, and the profiles capture both the tooling and the exploited CVEs that have been observed across multiple intrusions. TheGentlemen’s RTM profile is here and RVM profile is here.
DragonForce
DragonForce has continued to escalate throughout 2025 and into 2026, branching into MSP-focused attacks and standing up its own "cartel" model that other affiliates can plug into. Its exploitation of edge devices (Ivanti, Fortinet, SonicWall) and SimpleHelp RMM make it a high-priority threat for any organisation using such systems. DragonForce’s RTM profile is here and RVM profile is here.
WarLock
WarLock jumped onto everyone's radar after the ToolShell SharePoint zero-day exploitation campaign, and has since been linked to a string of edge-application exploits including SmarterMail, SolarWinds Web Help Desk, and Gladinet CentreStack. It is a strong example of a likely China-based operator that lives on zero-day exploitation of internet-facing software. WarLock’s RTM profile is here and RVM profile is here.
Observations and Trends
A few themes are worth flagging across all three profiles:
BYOVD is now standard, not novel. All three groups have been observed bringing vulnerable drivers to disable or blind EDR. TheGentlemen with ThrottleStop driver, DragonForce with the TrueSight and Hangzhou Shunwang drivers, and WarLock with Antiy, NsecSoft, Rising, and VMTools drivers. If your detection stack is not yet hunting on or blocking suspicious driver loads and known-bad driver hashes, that is a high-priority gap to close.
Network edge devices and other internet-facing systems remain the front door to victim networks for these groups. Fortinet, Ivanti, SonicWall, SimpleHelp, Microsoft SharePoint, SmarterMail, SolarWinds Web Help Desk, and Gladinet CentreStack all appear across these three profiles. Patch prioritisation that focuses on internet-exposed appliances and admin tooling continues to give defenders a valuable return on effort.
Legitimate tooling continues to blur the line. Velociraptor, Cloudflared, VSCode Tunnels, AnyDesk, MeshCentral, FreeRDP, PuTTY, OpenSSH, and a long list of legitimate cloud services are all being repurposed for ransomware operations. Defender should use these lists to begin baselining what should exist in their environment and start alerting on the rest.
Conclusion
My recommendation for defenders remains the same as in previous updates: take the tools and CVEs from the RTM and RVM profiles and start threat hunting for their presence, writing detection rules to alert on certain behaviours, and blocking what is not expected or permitted in your environment. These three new profiles should make that easier to scope by group when you need to brief leadership, prioritise a hunt, or map your exposure to a specific campaign.
Here's a few sites that can help with turning the threat intel in these new profiles into detections:
As always, feedback and pull requests are very welcome on both repos. Thanks to everyone who has contributed reports, corrections, and ideas. These projects only stay useful because the community keeps feeding them one way or another.
What Happened:On 10 May 2026, the UK-based firm Arup Group was listed as a victim on the Tor data leak site of FulcrumSec. On their Tor data leak site, FulcrumSec stated that they have exposed 700GB of GitHub repos and 2TB of Azure and AWS S3 cloud, plus database backups.Other types of data the adversary claims to have stolen includes Neuron BMS client databases, Odoo ERP data, A66 landowner files, Apple code-signing certificates with plaintext passwords, a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project w
On 10 May 2026, the UK-based firm Arup Group was listed as a victim on the Tor data leak site of FulcrumSec.
On their Tor data leak site, FulcrumSec stated that they have exposed 700GB of GitHub repos and 2TB of Azure and AWS S3 cloud, plus database backups.
Other types of data the adversary claims to have stolen includes Neuron BMS client databases, Odoo ERP data, A66 landowner files, Apple code-signing certificates with plaintext passwords, a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project with production payment gateway credentials, and the source code of ArupCompute and Oasys.
The FulcrumSec operators also claimed to have spent over half a year analysing the data and went through “email correspondence” with the company before publishing the stolen data.
On the victim post, FulcrumSec wrote a detailed incident breakdown. In it, they stated they gained initial access in September 2025 via a GitHub personal access token found hardcoded in a JavaScript file on a forgotten subdomain, which provided access to over 10,000 private GitHub repositories belonging to Arup Group.
From there, they scanned the repositories and found additional hardcoded tokens, API keys, and passwords for AWS, Azure, and databases.
The adversary stated that Arup detected the Github and Azure Storage intrusions approximately six weeks after they happened and rotated the credentials, but it was too late as the data had been exfiltrated.
FulcrumSec also stated they pivoted into the AWS infrastructure using keys they had found belonging to Arup’s subsidiary Neuron.
FulcrumSec allegedly waited until April 2026 to contact their victim, Arup Group, due to the time it took to analyse the vast amounts of stolen data.
Impacted client organisations of Arup Group were also mentioned in the post, such as Disney and several other Hong Kong companies. The adversary reportedly uncovered Amazon data center seismic fragility data, British Petroleum (BP) site selection coordinates, and Queensferry Crossing internal documents as well.
Critically for the UK, the breached data exposed up to 62 HS2 related GitHub repositories. This involved Euston Station pile design files, ground movement assessments, over 14,000 sensor monitoring records, 48 archaeological site GPS coordinates (including Jones Hill Wood, a sensitive site for environmentalists), as well as confidential documents.
Analyst Comment:
Arup Group is a large multinational architectural design and engineering firm based in London who has been involved in constructing the Wembley Football Stadium in London, the HS1 Channel Tunnel Rail Link network, and the Eden Project in Cornwall, among other significant international construction projects.
Active since September 2025, FulcrumSec is a financially motivated data-theft-extortion group that specialises in rapid exfiltration of cloud-hosted databases by exploiting unrotated API keys and misconfigured cloud permissions.
This attack was noteworthy due to its highly targeted nature. FulcrumSec claimed they had access to Arup Group’s data for seven months and they clearly invested significant time to analyse the documents and spent weeks negotiating over email. Plus, to find initial access they also would have had to spend time checking Arup’s domains and Internet-facing assets to eventually find a single leaked credential to exploit. These types of targeted intrusions often only happen to large companies. This is because for it to be worth the cybercriminal’s time, effort, and risk to their freedom they will want a large ransom payment that only rich companies can typically afford.
FulcrumSec is an adversary worth monitoring due to the effort they put into their intrusions compared to other smash-and-grab ransomware campaigns. In October 2025, in a case documented by VX-Underground, FulcrumSec emailed detailed information about the breach they conducted with the aim of those details getting published and exert additional pressure on the victim.
Interestingly, FulcrumSec said the ransom they demanded was less than 1% of Arup’s annual revenue and was less than how much Arup lost to the deepfake fraudsters. This is a reference to Arup reportedly lost over £20 million pounds in 2024 after one of their Hong Kong employees was duped into sending cash to cybercriminals using an AI-generated video call. The fact Arup became publicly known for falling victim to a large scam potentially contributed to the adversary’s decision to select and focus them for this attack.
Defensive Takeaways:
Asset Inventory and Shadow IT Audits: Identifying the outdated unused domains with hardcoded credentials is standard best practices. All organisations must have processes in place to catalog and retire systems to avoid incidents like this.
Hardcoded Credentials in Code: They way FulcrumSec gained access demonstrates the importance of using secret environment variables and features like GitHub Secret Scanning.
Implement Incident Response Procedures: Importantly, Arup detect the activity too late and it took them a staggering six weeks to rotate credentials (according to the adversary), which shows why having automated systems to check for unauthorised usage and reset tokens and all accounts is crucial to respond to such attacks.
GitHub Activity Monitoring: The adversary claimed they were able to clone thousands of GitHub repositories containing sensitive data without being detected. These types of activities are available to monitor and detect in GitHub Audit Logs. It’s also important to have a plan in place when suspicious activities are detected.
Third-Party Risk Management Programs: This incident also had some notable downstream impact. It shows why client organisations of another company’s services need to know what data and how much data is stored by third-parties for when such breaches occur. Knowing what’s potentially exposed will streamline the response to the incident.
Deception Tech: Arup could have implemented a boobytraps for the adversary such as the use of CanaryTokens inside sensitive documents. As the adversary spent time analysing the Arup’s documents before contacting them, if they open a boobytrapped document, then the incident could been detected much earlier and the damages could have been reduced.
What Happened:On 3 May 2026, ShinyHunters, the English-speaking adolescent cybercrime collective, claimed they breached Instructure by listing them on their Tor data leak site.Instructure is a US-based software provider behind the widely adopted Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). ShinyHunters reportedly exfiltrated 3.65 terabytes of data, spanning 275 million global records from up to 9,000 institutions, before posting extortion messages across university login portals demanding Bitcoin.T
On 3 May 2026, ShinyHunters, the English-speaking adolescent cybercrime collective, claimed they breached Instructure by listing them on their Tor data leak site.
Instructure is a US-based software provider behind the widely adopted Canvas Learning Management System (LMS).
ShinyHunters reportedly exfiltrated 3.65 terabytes of data, spanning 275 million global records from up to 9,000 institutions, before posting extortion messages across university login portals demanding Bitcoin.
The outage forced prominent UK higher education institutions, including the University of Liverpool, Queen’s University Belfast, and the University of Manchester, to take systems offline and hastily rewrite their end-of-year exam submission schedules.
Instructure confirmed the affected data includes names, student ID numbers, email addresses, and private student-instructor messages. Instructure also confirmed no passwords, financial data, or government IDs were pilfered.
When the initial negotiation deadline passed, ShinyHunters then escalated by defacing Canvas login portals at roughly 330 institutions and pivoting to direct school-by-school extortion.
Following the initial investigation into the breach, Instructure confirmed that ShinyHunters had exploited a vulnerability in its “Free-for-Teacher” account creation system.
To prevent the data from being leaked, Instructure announced it had “reached an agreement with the unauthorised actor” behind the data extortion attack.
According to an expert interviewed by ABC News, while a ransom amount hadn't yet been verified or publicly confirmed, people claiming to have knowledge of the situation estimated the amount was $10 million USD.
Analyst Comment:
Canvas is reportedly the UK’s primary digital learning platform, whose usage grew significantly during the pandemic. The timing of the attack also couldn’t come at a worse time for UK universities. In May, thousands of undergraduate students will be uploading their dissertations and trying to access their course content to prepare for their exams.
Active since 2019, ShinyHunters is a financially motivated data-theft-extortion collective that first emerged publicly in January 2020. Notably, ShinyHunters does not currently deploy ransomware as part of their intrusions. Instead, they exfiltrate data from cloud platforms, software environments, and third-party integrators, then demand a ransom to avoid its public release. SaaS Platforms such as Salesforce, Snowflake, GainSight, SalesLoft Drift and their customers have been targeted by ShinyHunters and adjacent groups in the last couple years.
Instructure is one of the few victims who have likely paid ShinyHunters. Most victims refuse due to not being able to trust that the cybercriminals will stick to their word and delete the stolen data. The consensus across the industry is paying the ransom is never the appropriate option for multiple reasons, such as fuelling future attacks, making your company look like an easy target, and possibly violating sanctions and local ransom payment ban laws. The most likely scenario is that Instructure felt they should pay the ransom to prevent further harm from the release of personal information of millions of students in their system.
Defensive Takeaways:
Enhance Platform Security: ShinyHunters reportedly exploited a vulnerability in Instructure’s Free-for-Teacher system, which highlights the importance of identity security audits alongside standard application penetration testing.
Enhance Logging and Round-the-Clock Monitoring: ShinyHunters reportedly exfiltrated 3.65 terabytes of data from Instructure. Enhanced activity logs and a certified 24/7 SOC monitoring service could have detected these actions by identifying anomalous login events and data exfiltration events to unknown IP addresses.
Create and Test Backup Processes: While Canvas was down, the universities shifted to alternative methods like email and printed paper. This case highlights the importance of business continuity plans (BCPs) along with making sure they are updated and tested.
Be Wary of Second-Order Effects: After a breach of this size, its key to warn users and SOC teams to be vigilant for new waves of phishing emails, brute forcing attacks, and other account takeover methods leveraging the stolen data.
Never Trust a Cybercriminal: In Instructure’s case, the company says it received “digital confirmation of data destruction (shred logs).” However, as Allison Nixon says, it’s completely unprovable because such shred logs or videos can be easily faked.
What HappenedOn 5 May 2026, new data revealed that British romance scam victims were defrauded of a staggering £102 million last year, representing a 29% surge in reported cases.The figures come from information gathered by Report Fraud (f.k.a ActionFraud), which is a City of London Police-run service that logged 10,784 romance scam reports in 2025.According to the data, cybercriminals are reportedly pocketing roughly £280,000 everyday by exploiting online relationships, with individual losses
On 5 May 2026, new data revealed that British romance scam victims were defrauded of a staggering £102 million last year, representing a 29% surge in reported cases.
The figures come from information gathered by Report Fraud (f.k.a ActionFraud), which is a City of London Police-run service that logged 10,784 romance scam reports in 2025.
According to the data, cybercriminals are reportedly pocketing roughly £280,000 everyday by exploiting online relationships, with individual losses averaging £9,500 and in extreme cases, reaching up to £1 million per victim.
This wave of scam victims is part of the growing trend where scammers blend emotional manipulation with fake cryptocurrency investment schemes, heavily weaponising AI-generated profiles, and focusing on lonely victims aged 55 to 74.
Analyst Comment
When analysing fraud statistics, it is important to remember that underreporting is very common, with many victims staying silent out of shame. Therefore, this is likely only a fraction of the real figures and the problem is likely much worse than we know. The data we do have, however, still reveals there is essentially an army of digital scammers routinely bleeding UK citizens dry, using not much more than a Midjourney AI subscription, a ChatGPT script, face-swapping services, and an entirely fictitious character with an emotional backstory.
Losing £102 million in a single year to fake internet characters is a truly wild national milestone. The fact that reports surged by nearly a third (29%) proves that in our society, emotional vulnerability is being monetised at industrial scale. We aren’t just looking at a clumsy email from a Nigerian prince anymore. This is industrial-grade social engineering. Scammers are playing the long game, spending months "love-bombing" victims before dropping the inevitable bombshell that they need a quick bank transfer to cover a “medical emergency” or an unmissable cryptocurrency investment opportunity.
In March 2026, the UK Government took some action against this threat and sanctioned Xinbi, a Chinese-language cryptocurrency marketplace accused of enabling large-scale online fraud and human exploitation. Xinbi reportedly processed more than $19.9 billion in transactions between 2021 and 2025, highlighting how much money the scam industry is generating globally.
Until we treat the underground scam economy with the same significance we treat ransomware or nation state attacks, the UK will continue to be one of the world's most lucrative money spinners for heartless cybercriminals.
Defensive Takeaways
Enforce the "Face-to-Face" Financial Boundary: If you are advising family members (especially those in vulnerable demographics), establish an unshakeable, non-negotiable rule: if you have not looked a person in their physical eyeballs, you do not send them money, gift cards, or cryptocurrency.
Teach Others Digital Sanity Checks: Teach your friends and family the art of basic digital literacy. Run profile images through reverse-image search tools (Google Lens or TinEye) and consciously flag the platform migration trap. Scammers desperately want to move targets off monitored apps like Tinder or Bumble and onto unmoderated WhatsApp or Telegram channels as fast as possible to avoid automated dating app ban filters.
Learn From the Mistakes of Others: To find examples of victims falling for these scams, the UK Financial Ombudsman Service’s database of decisions can act as a useful resource. The decision details can help you understand how these scams work, how much money individuals can lose, and the rate at which UK banks offer refunds or compensation. More examples can be found in my talk on this topic here.
Leverage Stripe’s FT3 Framework: If your organisation or team is tasked with combating fraud, then categorising these scammers TTPs is crucial. That’s why Stripe has developed the Fraud Tools, Tactics, and Techniques (FT3) framework. It’s designed to help security teams understand the landscape, spot gaps, develop detections, improve incident response, and foster collaboration.
What Happened:On 11 May 2026, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined South Staffordshire Water £963,900 after the Cl0p ransomware group lurked completely undetected in its network for nearly two years.Initial access reportedly occurred via a malicious phishing email in September 2020, which downloaded Cl0p’s Get2Loader malware and their SDBBOT backdoor to establish persistence.The breach itself, however, was only discovered two years later in July 2022 when staff began investigati
On 11 May 2026, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined South Staffordshire Water £963,900 after the Cl0p ransomware group lurked completely undetected in its network for nearly two years.
Initial access reportedly occurred via a malicious phishing email in September 2020, which downloaded Cl0p’s Get2Loader malware and their SDBBOT backdoor to establish persistence.
The breach itself, however, was only discovered two years later in July 2022 when staff began investigating IT performance slowdowns and ultimately found out that 4.1 terabytes of data was exfiltrated and the personal data of 633,887 customers and employees being published in August 2022 on Cl0p’s Tor data leak site.
The ICO’s investigation also revealed a staggering list of systemic failures, such as South Staff’s outsourced Security Operations Center (SOC) was blind to 95% of the network and that they conducted zero internal or external vulnerability scans over an 18-month window.
At the time of the attack they were still running Windows Server 2003 machines long after extended support ended. Further, two of their domain controllers were left completely unpatched against ZeroLogon (CVE-2020-1472), a critical, easily exploitable vulnerability published years before the intrusion.
Analyst Comment:
This case is a sobering look at the technical debt hiding inside the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). A dwell time of nearly two years is practically unheard of in modern ransomware operations, and the TTPs used by the adversary points to a total breakdown of their defences. Cl0p didn’t need sophisticated, state-sponsored techniques or zero-days to pull this one off, they just walked back in through an infection that went undetected.
The ICO’s findings also reveal the reality that many UK organisations still treat cybersecurity as a set-and-forget compliance check rather than routine efforts to mature and upgrade systems or proactive measures to hunt and detect threats lurking inside the network.
Defensive Takeaways:
Audit Your Outsourced SOC: As we learned from this incident, never assume the third-party security provider sees everything or is doing everything right. Establish audits to verify that endpoint telemetry and logs from your entire estate are actively ingested, retained, and monitored in the right platform.
Harden Your Crown Jewels Against Old Flaws: Ensure that active directory and domain controllers are strictly monitored and prioritised for critical patches. Vulnerabilities like ZeroLogon remain a ransomware operator’s favourite tool for fast lateral movement and escalation to Domain Admin access. This is exactly what Cl0p and a dozen or so other groups use.
IntroductionWhen a company that manages data for millions of UK citizens falls victim to ransomware, the whole industry should pay attention to it. On 15 October 2025, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) published a detailed 136 page report about the Capita breach. The aim of this blog is to extract actionable cybersecurity lessons from the ICO’s findings as well as open source reports surrounding the breach from a cyber threat intelligence (CTI) analyst’s perspective to help SOC and
When a company that manages data for millions of UK citizens falls victim to ransomware, the whole industry should pay attention to it. On 15 October 2025, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) published a detailed 136 page report about the Capita breach.
The aim of this blog is to extract actionable cybersecurity lessons from the ICO’s findings as well as open source reports surrounding the breach from a cyber threat intelligence (CTI) analyst’s perspective to help SOC and CERT teams, and CISOs understand what happened and how to avoid the mistakes made by others.
BLUF Incident Impact Summary:
Capita was attacked by BlackBasta ransomware in March 2023
Over six million individual’s records were exfiltrated from Capita’s systems
A £14 million fine was issued to Capita by the ICO
Capita said in May 2023, the incident cost up to £20 million to recover
Important context about Capita
The Capita Group is a business process outsourcing (BPO) and professional services group employing approximately 34,500 people worldwide and with a reported annual revenue of £2,421.6 million. For readers outside of Great Britain, Capita is best known as the UK’s go-to managed service provider for large-scale, data-sensitive public sector operations.
Companies within the Capita Group act as data processors for a range of business services to both public and private sector organisations. Capita plc is the ultimate parent company of a large corporate group consisting of multiple legal entities.
Capita has long been one of the UK government’s biggest suppliers of outsourced services.
They manage (or have managed):
The BBC TV Licensing system
The UK Congestion Charge for Transport for London (TfL)
The National Pupil Database – via contracts with the Department for Education.
Electronic tagging of offenders – under contracts with the Ministry of Justice.
Council administration and call-centre services – many local authorities (e.g., Birmingham, Southampton, Sheffield)
Numerous Local Government and private sector pension schemes (including universities, utilities, and insurance companies).
Ministry of Defence (MOD) – Training and support contracts for the British Army’s Recruitment Partnership Project (including vetting systems) and Royal Navy training programmes.
The ICO established that during the Incident, data was exfiltrated from two legal entities which were acting as data controllers, and from four legal entities which were acting as data processors:
Capita plc - Capita plc’s focus includes Central Government, Local Public Service, Defence, Education, and Pensions. Capita was selected to administer the UK’s Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) from September 2025, via a contract worth £239m over 10 years.
Capita Resourcing Limited - is a subsidiary of Capita plc focused on resourcing/human-capital services, i.e., recruitment, contingent staffing, talent acquisition.
Capita Business Services Limited - is another subsidiary that provides business-process and digital services (as a part of the Capita outsourcing ecosystem). The supplier record shows over £331.9m recorded government spending linked to this entity.
Capita Pension Solutions Ltd (CPSL) - a regulated pensions business within the Capita Group. Its role: delivering pensions administration and consulting services for pension schemes, including defined benefit schemes.
Breach Timeline
In the ICO’s report, a timeline of events that led to data exfiltration and ransomware deployment was provided. The timeline diagram below helps illustrate what happened.
TheRecord also reported that Capita’s share price dropped more than 12% from a high of £38.64 ($47.97) on March 30, the day before the incident was first reported, to £33.72 ($42.58) on Wednesday morning.
On 3 April 2023, Capita released a public statement about the cyber incident. At the time, Capita said the “issue was limited to parts of the Capita network and there is no evidence of customer, supplier or colleague data having been compromised.”
On 8 April 2023, Brett Callow spotted that Capita had been listed on BlackBasta’s Tor data leak site before it was quickly removed that same day.
Security researcher Kevin Beaumont who analysed the leaked data samples at the time identified copies of stolen passport scans, PII records, bank account details, internal floor plans of multiple buildings from various schools as well as Capita Nuclear, part of Capita Business Services.
It took Capita until 20 April 2023 to confirm that some of its systems were in fact breached and that data had been stolen.
Types of Stolen Data
In the ICO’s report, we learn that 6,024,221 data subjects for whom Capita was the data processor had personal data exfiltrated, as determined by Capita’s forensic provider.
Types of data stolen included sensitive such as Home Address, Email, Phone Number, National Insurance Numbers, Driver’s License Scans, Passport Scans, Bank Account Numbers & Sort Codes, Credit Card Numbers, Biometrics, Criminal Record Checks, and Employee Login details.
BlackBasta Operator TTPs
The tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of the BlackBasta operators provided in the breach timeline by the ICO are useful for understanding what technical steps were involved that led to the breach and ransomware attack. A summary of the aspects of the attack have been mapped to a diamond model diagram below.
Outside of the breach timeline, some additional technical details were shared:
Following initial access, the Threat Actor accessed the ‘CAPITA\backupadmin’ service account approximately 4.5 hours later. Capita could not confirm how the Threat Actor was able to escalate their privileges; however, there were traces of Kerberos credential harvesting and reconnaissance activity found following the Incident.
The Threat Actor was able to use the ‘CAPITA\backupadmin’ domain administrator account to pivot to administrator accounts in different Capita domains. In total no fewer than 8 domains were compromised, a very large quantity of data was exfiltrated and the Threat Actor attempted to deploy ransomware on at least 1057 hosts.
Even though Capita quarantined the device through which the Threat Actor first gained access on 24 March 2023, by this time the Threat Actor had deployed software into the network which had enabled them to establish persistence and ultimately allowed them to continue moving laterally across the network into different Capita domains and to access/exfiltrate data, before deploying ransomware on 31 March 2023.
Interestingly, in February 2025 internal chat logs from the BlackBasta gang were leaked publicly online. Analysis of the leaked chat logs for references of Capita revealed the below command shared by one of the BlackBasta members months after the attack happened:
The domain "corpcitrix.ad.capita.co.uk" appears to be an internal Active Directory domain name used by Capita to host its corporate Citrix environment. The "ad" label shows it’s an AD DNS namespace, "corpcitrix" indicates the environment is for Citrix-published desktops/apps or related infrastructure, and "capita.co.uk" is the organisation’s FQDN.
The command shown above is a PowerShell invocation (potentially via Cobalt Strike) to enumerate every system in the domain, resolve each machine’s IP address, and save the results to “SFS_pc.txt” file. Powerpick runs the code in an unmanaged PowerShell environment and can execute without being dependent on powershell.exe.
In short, this command shows a BlackBasta operator running net reconnaissance mapping hosts and IPs (likely to plan lateral movement, targeting, exfiltration or ransomware deployment).
Notable moments during the Incident
Critical alerts were mishandled or deprioritised: The initial malicious file (‘jdmb.js’) triggered a P2 (High) alert at 08:00 on 22 March 2023, indicating compromise. The SOC did not act for nearly 58 hours, despite automatic escalation warnings for missed service-level agreements (SLAs). The ICO also noted that “at no point in the six months before or after the Incident did Capita meet their SLA for any alert level.”
Excessive delay between detection and containment, plus a lack of automation: Isolation of the device from the rest of the Capita network still required human intervention, which took 58 hours to arrive. Capita’s SOC lacked the ability to isolate the device automatically. By then, the attacker had already gained domain admin access and moved laterally.
Inadequate incident response procedures: Capita did not invoke its Major Incident Management process until 09:22 on 29 March 2023, which was seven days after compromise. By that point, data exfiltration was already underway and it was two days before ransomware was deployed on 31 March 2023.
Understaffed and overburdened SOC team: Capita is understood to have had 1 SOC analyst per shift in place at the time of the Incident in March 2023. This combined with historic underperformance indicates systemic issues within the SOC, including inadequate staffing, insufficient training, and/or inefficient processes.
Lessons Learned from the BlackBasta Ransomware Attack on Capita
Having tools isn’t enough, they must be configured, integrated, and monitored effectively
Capita had Trellix EDR, a SIEM, and a SOC, but alerts were missed and containment delayed.
Lessons: Security tools are only as effective as the people, processes, and automation supporting them. Critical security alerts must have clear, measurable response times with automatic escalation if breached. Security Leadership must define and enforce strong Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for incident response.
Implement proper Active Directory (AD) tiering
Lack of AD tiering allowed attackers to move laterally from low-privilege systems to domain controllers (specifically a backup service account with domain admin privileges).
Lessons: Segregate admin privileges between tiers (workstations, servers, domain controllers) to contain breaches. Limit, rotate, and monitor privileged accounts using a PAM solution to enforce least privilege. Regularly review service accounts, ensure unique credentials, and monitor their activity for anomalies.
Act on penetration test findings promptly
Multiple pentests also warned of AD and privilege issues months before the breach, but fixes were delayed.
Lesson: Treat pentest reports as actionable tasks with deadlines and executive oversight.
Automate incident response where possible (SOAR)
Lack of Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) led to manual triage delays.
Lesson: Use SOAR playbooks to automate containment, escalation, and alert enrichment for faster response.
IntroductionThe Ransomware Tool Matrix continues to be a useful passion project that I am happy to continue maintaining. One piece of common feedback I've received for the Ransomware Tool Matrix was that individuals would like to contribute their observations to it, but do not have public links they can cite (such as a formal blog post on a company website). Therefore, I came up with a plan to make a reporting template to help with this.What are Community Reports?Individuals can now share what
The Ransomware Tool Matrix continues to be a useful passion project that I am happy to continue maintaining. One piece of common feedback I've received for the Ransomware Tool Matrix was that individuals would like to contribute their observations to it, but do not have public links they can cite (such as a formal blog post on a company website). Therefore, I came up with a plan to make a reporting template to help with this.
What are Community Reports?
Individuals can now share what tools they have seen various ransomware groups, affiliates, or initial access brokers (IABs) use via the new Community Report Template. The level of detail provided is the contributor's choice. The more verifiable information shared, the increased level of reliability and credibility.
You can view the current list of Community Reports on GitHub here.
Why the need for Community Reports?
Most of the sources of CTI about ransomware TTPs comes from open source reports by organisations such as the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), The DFIR Report, and other cybersecurity vendors. From the beginning it was important to recognise the importance of the having public citations by reputable organisations to maintain the reliability and credibility of the resource overall. Consumers of the Ransomware Tool Matrix should feel confident that the information provided is of high standard and legitimate.
The problem was, however, that members of the cybersecurity community who may work with victims of ransomware attacks also have information about what tools which ransomware group uses.
The sources of this information could come from various sources, such as from Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) service providers, Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vendors, or security researchers who manage to obtain threat intelligence about ransomware groups via various other means, such as infiltrating cybercrime forums or open directory hunting.
These sources of information did not currently have a way to contribute to the Ransomware Tool Matrix due to the missing factor of a publicly citable blog.
How do Community Reports work?
Members of the Community with information and tools used by ransomware groups can now share their observations via a structured report template shown below.
Whether to include all the details here is up to the contributor, but this type of reporting system is an option for community members to share their findings with the rest of the community who are interested in this information.
Anyone who wants to submit a Community Report can copy the code, edit in their findings, and submit a pull request to the GitHub repository. Alternatively, they can fork the project and then I can merge their commits to the main branch. More details about how to creating a pull request from a fork can be found in the GitHub's Docs here.
Conclusion
One of the problems of cybersecurity vendor blogs is that a lot of them are marketing material and therefore, details about every ransomware incident a company worked on is not great marketing. However, as CTI analysts, incident responders, threat hunters, and detection engineers, these details are crucial for our day-to-day lives. Hence why the Community Report system was one of the most common pieces of feedback I received and why I created it.
I look forward to the contributions from the community to this new reporting system and hope it helps many more who are keen to see and read about what the latest tools are that the ransomware cybercriminals are using.
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