Disclosure context

About hive

Hive is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in August 2021, operating as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model to maximize their criminal enterprise's reach and profitability. The group is suspected to have origins in Eastern Europe based on their operational patterns and linguistic indicators, though definitive attribution remains unclear, and they operate independently while recruiting affiliates to conduct attacks on their behalf. Hive primarily gains initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials, phishing campaigns, and exploitation of known vulnerabilities in public-facing applications, subsequently deploying their custom ransomware payload that uses a combination of RSA and AES encryption algorithms while simultaneously exfiltrating sensitive data before encryption to enable double extortion tactics where they threaten to publish stolen information if ransom demands are not met. The group has targeted over 208 victims globally with a particular focus on manufacturing companies, business services, information technology firms, healthcare services, and internet and telecommunication services, primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Indonesia, and China, including notable attacks against healthcare systems and critical infrastructure that drew significant attention from law enforcement agencies. In January 2023, the FBI announced the successful disruption of Hive's operations, seizing their dark web leak sites and decryption keys, effectively dismantling the group's infrastructure and providing free decryption tools to victims. The group has been linked to 208 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on August 14, 2021; most recent post January 16, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

December 20, 2022Dixons Allerton Academy listed by hiveon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 694 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Dixons Allerton Academy is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 902 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

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.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Dixons Allerton Academy

Claimed by hive · listed 3 years ago

41m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Dec 20, 2022
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: hive
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Dec 20, 2022

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Dixons Allerton Academy (formerly Rhodesway Academy) is a coeducational all-through school and sixth form located in the Allerton area of the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It serves pupils from primary through to sixth-form age as part of the Dixons Academies Trust. The school is a publicly funded academy operating within the UK state education sector.

Industry: Primary & Secondary Education (K-12)
Address: Allerton, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published (not merely threatened), and a school environment almost certainly holds regulated personal data including minors' records, staff PII, and potentially safeguarding/welfare information — categories that are sensitive under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

The Hive ransomware group claims to have attacked Dixons Allerton Academy and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), indicating exfiltration of school data, though specific data categories and volume are not detailed in the truncated leak post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Staff personal data
School administrative documents
Potentially sensitive educational/safeguarding records

What the group claims

Dixons Allerton Academy (formerly Rhodesway Academy) is a coeducational all-through school and sixth form located in Allerton area of the City of Bradford, in the English county of West Yorkshire.

Source

Indexed 3 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.