Disclosure context

About Vicesociety

Vicesociety is a ransomware group that emerged in May 2021, primarily motivated by financial gain through targeting critical infrastructure and public service organizations. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain largely undetermined by public threat intelligence reporting, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation rather than a established RaaS model. Vicesociety primarily gains initial access through exploitation of public-facing applications and credential-based attacks, with documented cases showing they particularly focus on compromising remote access services and vulnerable web applications before deploying their ransomware payload across victim networks. The group has demonstrated a clear preference for targeting educational institutions, government agencies, and healthcare organizations, with their 188 documented victims concentrated heavily in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Spain, indicating a focus on English-speaking and Western European entities. While specific high-profile campaigns have not been extensively detailed in major public threat intelligence reports from CISA or FBI advisories, the group's consistent targeting of critical sectors like education and healthcare has drawn attention from security researchers monitoring threats to essential services. Vicesociety remains active as of recent threat intelligence assessments, continuing their operations against similar target sectors with no documented law enforcement disruption or significant operational changes. The group has been linked to 188 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on May 31, 2021; most recent post December 14, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 5, 2023HAW Hamburg listed by Vicesocietyon 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, HAW Hamburg is reported in Germany, a country with 695 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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HAW Hamburg

Claimed by Vicesociety · listed 3 years ago

39m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Mar 5, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Vicesociety
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Mar 5, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

HAW Hamburg (Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg) is northern Germany's leading university of applied sciences, located in Hamburg, Germany. The institution serves students and researchers from more than 100 countries across multiple faculties covering engineering, life sciences, social sciences, and media. It is a large public institution offering undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programmes with significant research and international partnerships.

Industry: Higher Education (University of Applied Sciences)
Address: Berliner Tor 5, 20099 Hamburg, Germany
Employees: 1001-5000
Founded: 1970

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published (not merely threatened), targeting a large public university that holds PII of thousands of students and staff from over 100 countries, as well as research and administrative data. While not a government or healthcare entity, the confirmed exfiltration and publication of data at this scale from an educational institution with significant personal and institutional data warrants a high severity rating.

Vice Society claims to have exfiltrated data from HAW Hamburg, with the disclosure status recorded as data_published, indicating that stolen data has been released publicly. The leak post does not specify the precise data types or volume, but the attack targeted a large public university holding student, staff, and research records.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student personal records
Staff/employee records
Academic research data
Administrative documents
Authentication/IT credentials
Financial records

What the group claims

Developing sustainable solutions to the societal challenges of today and tomorrow. This is the goal of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg), northern Germany's leading applied sciences university when it comes to reflective practice. People from more than 100 countries help make HAW Hamburg what it is, and our diversity is our particular strength.

Sources

Victim sitehaw-hamburg.de/
Leak posthttp://xu66gzit6zp22qvixpenlxu2ok7vzrpqvgkuupkiukpz47va47ewbwad.onion/JhykowedsgX/PqWeXz8b7nvTr3/

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.