Was Smith Capital hit by ransomware?

Smith Capital was listed by the Monti ransomware operation (South Africa), and stolen data was published on the group's leak site. Darkfield tracks this disclosure with the original leak post, screenshot and group context.

Who is the Monti ransomware group?

Monti is a ransomware operator tracked by Darkfield. See the full operator dossier for its known victims, sectors targeted, IOCs and leak-site infrastructure.

What data was leaked in the Smith Capital breach?

Monti published data attributed to Smith Capital. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Smith Capital Equipment

listed as Smith Capital · Claimed by Monti · listed 2 years ago

21m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 26, 2024
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Monti
Status: Data leaked
Country: South Africa
Listed on leak site: Aug 26, 2024

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Smith Capital Equipment is a South African manufacturer of aerial platforms, truck-mounted cranes, and drilling rigs with over 40 years of operating history. A Level 1 BBBEE majority Black woman-owned company headquartered in Gauteng with workshop operations in KwaZulu-Natal, it is the only company in Africa designing and fabricating a full range of aerial platforms and serves utility, municipal, mining, and SOE sectors including Eskom.

Industry: Aerial Platforms, Drilling Rigs & Equipment Manufacturing
Address: 11 Junction Rd, Industries North, Driehoek, Germiston, Johannesburg, South Africa
Founded: 1982

Attack summary

Severity: low — No operational impact stated, no data inventory disclosed, no proof files advertised, and no ransom demand. The disclosure is minimal and appears to be a listing announcement only.

The Monti ransomware group claims to have attacked Smith Capital. The leak post provides no details on encryption, exfiltration, or specific data compromised, only indicating disclosure status as 'data_published' with no ransom demand stated.

low

What the group claims

Smith Affiliated Capital (SAC) was formed in 1982 to provide both discretionary and advisory investment management services to high-net worth individuals, their families, and institutional investors.

Sources

Source

Indexed 2 years ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

Is this your supplier? Your competitor? You?

Pro plans monitor your domain, corporate emails, and crypto wallets across every new ransomware leak-site post, breach dump and Telegram callout — alerts within 5 minutes.

Disclosure context

About Monti

Monti is a ransomware group that emerged in December 2022, operating with primarily financial motivations through targeted encryption attacks against organizations across multiple sectors. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain largely undocumented in public threat intelligence reports, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation rather than a established Ransomware-as-a-Service model. Monti's attack methodology and specific technical details regarding initial access vectors, encryption methods, and data exfiltration practices have not been extensively documented in publicly available threat intelligence from major security firms or government agencies. The group has reportedly compromised approximately 110 victims since their emergence, with their targeting primarily focused on organizations in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, and Italy, showing a particular preference for business services, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology sectors. Limited public documentation exists regarding specific notable campaigns or high-profile attacks attributed to Monti, reflecting the group's relatively recent emergence and lower profile compared to more established ransomware operations. As of current reporting, Monti appears to remain an active threat, though comprehensive intelligence on their current operational status is limited in publicly available sources from major cybersecurity organizations and law enforcement agencies. The group has been linked to 110 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 7, 2022; most recent post May 8, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

August 26, 2024Smith Capital listed by Montion the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Monti

Monti has been linked to 110 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Monti dossier →

Sector and geography

Geographically, Smith Capital is reported in South Africa, a country with 52 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Monti means Smith Capital appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
Report the incident to your national CERT, ECS-CSIRT (South Africa), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Monti's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.