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Desert Christian Schools (DCS)

Claimed by Medusa · listed 2 months ago

2m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedMay 5, 2026
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Medusa
Status
Data leaked
Country
United States
Sector
Education
Listed on leak site
May 5, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Desert Christian Schools (DCS) is a K-12 private Christian school affiliated with First Baptist Church of Lancaster, California. The school operates childcare programs in partnership with the California Department of Family and Child Services (DCFS) and participates in community programs such as the City of Lancaster Water Safety program. It manages payroll through ADP and maintains standard nonprofit/school financial reporting.

Industry
K-12 Private Christian Education
Address
Lancaster, California, USA

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Published data includes regulated PII categories: payroll records (employee financial/tax data including 1099s), DCFS childcare program records (which likely contain minor children's personally identifiable information — a highly sensitive protected class), and internal financial documents. Involvement of minors' records under a government childcare program elevates this to critical severity.

MedusaLocker claims to have exfiltrated sensitive data from Desert Christian Schools, publishing files that include payroll records, financial documents, childcare program records, and School Board minutes. The disclosure status indicates data has been published rather than merely threatened.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • ADP payroll records
  • DCFS childcare program records
  • City of Lancaster Water Safety program records
  • Profit & Loss statements
  • Balance sheets
  • Trial balance documents
  • 1099 tax forms
  • School Board minutes (2025)

What the group claims

K-12 Christian school affiliated with First Baptist Church of Lancaster, CA. ADP payroll, DCFS childcare program, City of Lancaster Water Safety program. Financial docs: P&L, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, 1099s. School Board minutes 2025.

The leak post

captured from the group's site
File Manager File Manager home page BARAAAI Data is being prepared for publication. BAPAMAI Data is being prepared for publication. BAUARAI Data is being prepared for publication. BAVADAI Data is being prepared for publication. BAVACAI Data is being prepared for publication. BAVAQAI Data is being prepared for publication. Raycolighting DEMO 3137 S Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA 90058, USA $10 000 Organization with 2 emails extracted. Domain: raycolighting.com baralai Data is being prepared for publication. CEAGESP / Netfeirasp DEMO São Paulo, Brazil $20 000 Brazilian produce wholesale market network. Domain netfeirasp.ceagesp (CEAGESP). Also demarchibrasil.com.br accounts. Colegio María Inmaculada (CMI) DEMO Moravia, San José, Costa Rica $50000 Catholic school in Moravia, Costa Rica. Domain cmi.local / mariainmaculada.ed.cr. Servers: CMI-DC01, CMI-APP, CMI-HTTP2, main-server1/2. Académie de Montpellier / CSJM DEMO Béziers, Occitanie, France $15000 French public school network. Domain CSJM.BEZIERS, part of Académie de Montpellier (ac-montpellier.fr). Occitanie region (laregion.fr). Teacher and admin staff credentials. Palmers Relocations DEMO Victoria, Australia $63 000 Australian …

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 Medusa

Medusa, also known as MedusaLocker, is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in November 2022 and has since compromised 568 known victims across multiple countries. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain unclear from publicly available intelligence, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation rather than a documented Ransomware-as-a-Service model. Medusa primarily targets organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, and Australia, with a focus on business services, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology sectors, employing typical ransomware tactics including data encryption and likely exfiltration for double extortion purposes, though specific technical methodologies and initial access vectors have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports. While the group has maintained a relatively high victim count since its emergence, detailed information about specific notable campaigns, high-profile victims, or major ransom demands has not been widely reported by major cybersecurity firms or law enforcement agencies. As of current intelligence assessments, Medusa appears to remain active in the threat landscape, continuing to target organizations across their established geographic and sectoral preferences. The group has been linked to 635 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 15, 2022; most recent post May 5, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: MedusaLocker, MEDUSA LOCKER.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • May 5, 2026Desert Christian Schools (DCS) listed by Medusaon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Medusa

Medusa has been linked to 635 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Medusa 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, Desert Christian Schools (DCS) is reported in United States, a country with 3,115 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Medusa means Desert Christian Schools (DCS) 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 Medusa'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.