Was il Centro hit by ransomware?

il Centro was listed by the Knight ransomware operation (Italy), 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 Knight ransomware group?

Knight 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 il Centro breach?

Knight published data attributed to il Centro. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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il Centro

Claimed by Knight · listed 3 years ago

32m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedOct 31, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Knight
Status: Data leaked
Country: Italy
Sector: Media & Entertainment
Listed on leak site: Oct 31, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Il Centro SpA is an Italian regional daily newspaper serving the Abruzzo region, founded on 3 July 1986 and headquartered in Pescara, Italy. It covers local news across the provinces of Chieti, L'Aquila, Pescara, and Teramo, and offers both print and digital editions. The publication is part of GEDI Gruppo Editoriale, following a merger with Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, which had acquired it in 1993.

Industry: Print & Digital News Media
Address: Largo Filomena Delli Castelli 10, 65128 Pescara (PE), Italy
Founded: 1986

Attack summary

Severity: high — The disclosure status is 'data_published', meaning the threat actor has already released stolen data. As a regional media company, this likely involves internal business records, employee PII, and potentially subscriber data, constituting confirmed exfiltration of significant business and personal data.

The Knight ransomware group claims to have attacked il Centro and the status is listed as data_published, indicating exfiltration and/or encryption with data subsequently released. No ransom amount or data size was specified in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Newspaper editorial content
Internal business documents
Employee records
Subscriber/reader data
Advertising and commercial records

What the group claims

https://www.ilcentro.it/Il Centro è il quotidiano d'Abruzzo. Il suo primo numero uscì il 3 luglio 1986.The newspaper was part of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso. It was acquired in 1993. After a merger, the parent company is now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale.

Sources

Victim siteilcentro.it
Leak posthttp://knight3xppu263m7g4ag3xlit2qxpryjwueobh7vjdc3zrscqlfu3pqd.onion/951c741b-6962-4f89-b410-9a5797dc1260/

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.

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Disclosure context

About Knight

Knight is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in September 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and demonstrating a focus on targeting critical infrastructure and high-value sectors. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain largely undocumented in public threat intelligence reports, though their operational patterns suggest they operate as an independent entity rather than a established ransomware-as-a-service model. With 48 known victims since their emergence, Knight has shown a preference for targeting organizations across the United States, Brazil, Italy, Spain, and Germany, with particular focus on healthcare, manufacturing, media, and government sectors. Their attack methodology and specific technical capabilities have not been extensively documented by major security firms, though their targeting of healthcare and government entities suggests they employ effective initial access techniques and likely utilize double extortion tactics common among contemporary ransomware groups. While specific notable campaigns have not been widely publicized by CISA, FBI, or major security researchers, the group's consistent activity across multiple countries and high-value sectors indicates sustained operational capability. Knight appears to remain active as of current reporting, though detailed technical analysis and specific law enforcement actions against the group have not been publicly documented by authoritative sources. The group has been linked to 48 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 6, 2023; most recent post February 12, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 31, 2023il Centro listed by Knighton the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Knight

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

See the full Knight dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Media & Entertainment sector, which has 97 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, il Centro is reported in Italy, a country with 635 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Knight means il Centro 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, CSIRT Italia (Italy), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Knight'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.