Was Hall Cross Academy hit by ransomware?

Hall Cross Academy was listed by the Snatch ransomware operation (United Kingdom), 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 Snatch ransomware group?

Snatch 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 Hall Cross Academy breach?

Snatch published data attributed to Hall Cross Academy. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Hall Cross Academy

Claimed by Snatch · listed 5 years ago

55m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJan 18, 2022
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Snatch
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Jan 18, 2022

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Hall Cross Academy is a large comprehensive academy school located in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom. It serves nearly 2,000 students and describes itself as an historic institution focused on securing positive futures for young people. It operates as an academy under the UK school system.

Industry: Secondary Education (Academy School)
Address: Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Employees: 201-500

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a school with nearly 2,000 students, meaning exfiltrated data almost certainly includes minors' PII, which constitutes regulated sensitive data under GDPR and UK data protection law. Data has been published, confirming exfiltration rather than mere encryption.

The Snatch ransomware group claims to have attacked Hall Cross Academy and has published data ('data_published' status), suggesting exfiltration of school data. The leak post excerpt references institutional and student-related information.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Staff personal data
School administrative documents
Potentially safeguarding or welfare records

What the group claims

Hall Cross is an historic institution which is proud of its traditions but what motivates us every day is securing the best future for every one of the young people we serve. A large and vibrant comprehensive academy with nearly 2000 students on roll including approximately

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 Snatch

Snatch is a ransomware group that emerged in November 2021, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors including business services, government, education, manufacturing, and healthcare. The group has compromised at least 142 known victims, with their attacks concentrated primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and France. Little is publicly documented about Snatch's specific country of origin or affiliations with other cybercriminal organizations, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation. The group's attack methodology and specific technical details regarding initial access vectors, encryption methods, and data exfiltration practices have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports from major security firms or government agencies. While Snatch has maintained a notable victim count across diverse geographic regions and industry sectors, there are no widely reported major campaigns or high-profile attacks that have drawn significant public attention or law enforcement action. Based on available public information, Snatch appears to remain an active ransomware operation as of recent reporting periods, though comprehensive details about their current operational status and recent activities are limited in open-source intelligence. The group has been linked to 142 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 29, 2021; most recent post May 16, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

January 18, 2022Hall Cross Academy listed by Snatchon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Snatch

Snatch has been linked to 142 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Snatch dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,085 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Hall Cross Academy is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 1,217 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Snatch means Hall Cross Academy 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 Snatch'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.