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Forestdale

Claimed by Moneymessage · listed 2 months ago

2 TB
Data size
$40
Ransom
demanded
2m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedMay 11, 2026
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Moneymessage
Status
Data leaked
Country
United Kingdom
Sector
Business Services
Listed on leak site
May 11, 2026
Data size
2 TB
Ransom demanded
$40

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Forestdale is a child welfare agency headquartered in Queens, New York, operating from three offices across Queens and Brooklyn. The organization provides foster care, adoption services, and community partnership programs aimed at addressing the root causes of family crises and supporting abused and neglected children. In 2020, Forestdale received a multimillion-dollar contract to expand services throughout Brooklyn, and its Queens campus spans three and a half acres with recreational facilities.

Industry
Child Welfare & Social Services
Address
Queens, New York, USA (with additional offices in Brooklyn Heights and Brooklyn)

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Forestdale is a child welfare agency handling highly sensitive PII of vulnerable populations including abused and neglected children, foster families, and adoptive families. A 2TB exfiltration from such an organisation almost certainly involves regulated child welfare records, minor PII, and family case data — among the most sensitive categories of personal data. Data has been published.

The moneymessage group claims to have exfiltrated approximately 2TB of sensitive private data from Forestdale, with the post indicating data has been published via a downloadable file link. No ransom amount was stated and no proof images were listed in the post.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Sensitive private data (2TB)
  • Potential child welfare case records
  • Potential foster care and adoption records
  • Potential personally identifiable information of minors and families

The group's post references roughly 1 proof file.

Original description

AI-summarised, not from the leak post

N/A

The leak post

captured from the group's site
```
[{"incidentDate":"2026.05.11","data":{"name":"Forestdale","timer":{"isEnabled":false,"expirationTime":"2026-05-10T12:00:00.000-08:00"},"incidentDate":"11.05.2026","description":"Forestdale is a child welfare agency headquartered in Queens. In addition to ensuring the well-being of abused and neglected children through foster care and adoption services, Forestdale partners with schools, religious organizations, business owners, and community leaders to address the root causes of family crises. The three-and-a-half-acre campus includes open fields, a basketball court, and a JetBlue playground. In 2020, Forestdale received a multimillion-dollar contract to provide services throughout Brooklyn and open offices approximately half a mile from its original location in Brooklyn Heights. Forestdale operates from three offices to better serve families in Brooklyn and Queens.\r\n\r\nWebsite:www.forestdaleinc.org\r\n\r\nRevenue:$40 Million\r\n\r\nSensitive private data: 2TB\r\n\r\nWait for data","images":[],"links":[],"downloadFiles":[{"file":"\/pub\/029\/","text":""}]}}]
```

Screenshot of the leak post

Leak screenshot for Forestdale

Sources

Source

Indexed 2 months 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 Moneymessage

Moneymessage is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in March 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors globally. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from major security agencies, detailed information about their origin and affiliations remains largely unknown, though their targeting patterns suggest they may operate as a smaller independent operation rather than a large-scale RaaS model. The group has demonstrated a broad targeting approach across healthcare, business services, public sector, government, and financial organizations, with their 29 documented victims spanning geographically diverse regions including the United States, Italy, Argentina, Bangladesh, and Russia, though specific attack methodologies and technical capabilities have not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence firms. Notable campaigns and high-profile attacks attributed to Moneymessage have not been widely reported by established security researchers or law enforcement agencies, likely due to the group's relatively recent emergence and smaller scale of operations compared to more prominent ransomware families. The group appears to remain active as of available reporting, though comprehensive analysis of their current operational status is limited by the lack of detailed public documentation from authoritative sources such as CISA, FBI, or major cybersecurity firms. The group has been linked to 34 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on March 29, 2023; most recent post July 9, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: money message.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • May 11, 2026Forestdale listed by Moneymessageon the group's public leak site
Data size
2 TB
Ransom demanded
$40

Other recent disclosures by Moneymessage

Moneymessage has been linked to 34 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Moneymessage dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Business Services sector, which has 3,796 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Forestdale is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 373 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Moneymessage means Forestdale 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, NCSC (United Kingdom), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on Moneymessage'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.