Was www.emmawillard.org hit by ransomware?

www.emmawillard.org was listed by the Payloadbin ransomware operation (United States), 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 Payloadbin ransomware group?

Payloadbin 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 www.emmawillard.org breach?

Payloadbin published data attributed to www.emmawillard.org. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Emma Willard School

listed as www.emmawillard.org · Claimed by Payloadbin · listed 5 years ago

58m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedSep 9, 2021
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Payloadbin
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Sep 9, 2021

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Emma Willard School is an independent, all-girls college-preparatory boarding and day school serving grades 9–12, located in Troy, New York. Founded in 1814, it is one of the oldest secondary schools for young women in the United States, offering a rigorous academic curriculum alongside arts, athletics, and community programs. The school emphasizes intellectual flexibility, leadership, and social impact.

Industry: Private Secondary Education (All-Girls Boarding & Day School)
Address: 285 Pawling Avenue, Troy, NY 12180, United States
Employees: 51-200
Founded: 1814

Attack summary

Severity: high — The victim is an educational institution serving minors (grades 9–12), and the status is 'data_published,' meaning data has already been released. Likely regulated data includes student PII, potentially health/counseling records and financial information, placing this at high severity due to the vulnerable population and probable FERPA-protected records exposure.

The Payloadbin ransomware group has listed Emma Willard School as a victim with a disclosed status of 'data_published,' indicating data exfiltration or publication has occurred. No specific details about the nature or volume of stolen data are available from the captured leak post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Staff/faculty personal information
Alumnae records
Financial/tuition data
Health and counseling records
Admissions data

Sources

Victim siteemmawillard.org

Source

Indexed 5 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.

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Disclosure context

About Payloadbin

Payloadbin is a relatively obscure ransomware group that emerged in September 2021, primarily motivated by financial gain through extortion operations targeting diverse sectors across multiple countries. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain largely undocumented in public threat intelligence reporting, with limited information available regarding whether they operate as an independent entity or utilize a Ransomware-as-a-Service model. Based on observed victim patterns, Payloadbin has demonstrated a broad targeting approach without apparent sector specialization, though they have notably impacted healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture and food production, and telecommunications organizations across 48 documented cases. Their attack methodology and specific technical capabilities have not been extensively documented by major security research organizations, though their operational pattern suggests standard ransomware deployment tactics. The group has primarily targeted victims in the United States, Philippines, Australia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, indicating either a broad opportunistic approach or potential linguistic capabilities spanning English-speaking regions and select international markets. No major high-profile campaigns, significant law enforcement disruptions, or notable ransomware payment records have been publicly attributed to this group by federal agencies or established threat intelligence firms. Current operational status remains unclear due to limited public documentation, though the group's relatively recent emergence and modest victim count suggests they may represent a smaller-scale operation compared to prominent ransomware families tracked by CISA and FBI reporting. The group has been linked to 48 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2021; most recent post March 26, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

September 9, 2021www.emmawillard.org listed by Payloadbinon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Payloadbin

Payloadbin has been linked to 48 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Payloadbin dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,082 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, www.emmawillard.org is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Payloadbin means www.emmawillard.org 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, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Payloadbin'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.