Was LINKGROUP hit by ransomware?

LINKGROUP was listed by the Arcusmedia ransomware operation (South Africa), 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 Arcusmedia ransomware group?

Arcusmedia 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 LINKGROUP breach?

Arcusmedia published data attributed to LINKGROUP. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Link Reflective & Protective Designs

listed as LINKGROUP · Claimed by Arcusmedia · listed 1 year ago

16m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 3, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Arcusmedia
Status: Data leaked
Country: South Africa
Sector: Financial Services
Listed on leak site: Mar 3, 2025

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Link Reflective & Protective Designs is a 100% Black female-owned uniform manufacturing company founded in 1998, specializing in traffic and EMS uniforms, reflective and rainwear, ceremonial garments, and ballistic body armour. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, the company employs over 280 staff including machinists, marketers, sales representatives, and technicians.

Industry: Uniform Manufacturing & Personal Protective Equipment
Address: 44 Prairie Street, Oakdene, Johannesburg, South Africa
Employees: 280
Founded: 1998

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data has been published by the ransomware operator, indicating confirmed exfiltration. However, the specific data types and scale are unclear from the available post; the company handles PPE and uniforms rather than highly regulated financial data, though employee PII may be at risk.

Arcusmedia claims to have compromised Link Reflective & Protective Designs and has published data. No details are provided in the truncated leak post regarding the scope of exfiltration or encryption.

medium

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Business records
Employee information
Customer data
Manufacturing/design documentation

What the group claims

Hard landscaping including new patios, retaining walls, rockeries, decking,…

Sources

Victim sitelinkgroup.co.za
Leak posthttp://arcuufpr5xxbbkin4mlidt7itmr6znlppk63jbtkeguuhszmc5g7qdyd.onion/?p=421

Source

Indexed 1 year 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 Arcusmedia

Arcusmedia is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in May 2024, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their targeting patterns across multiple countries and sectors. The group's origin and potential state affiliations remain unclear given limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources, though their targeting of victims across Brazil, the United States, Spain, UAE, and Mexico suggests either a geographically distributed operation or deliberate international scope. With 98 documented victims in a short operational timeframe, Arcusmedia has demonstrated notable activity levels, primarily focusing on technology, business services, agriculture and food production, and transportation/logistics sectors, though their targeting appears opportunistic rather than strategically focused given the "Not Found" classification as their primary sector target. Limited public reporting from major cybersecurity firms and law enforcement agencies means specific details about their attack methodologies, initial access vectors, encryption techniques, or whether they employ double extortion tactics remain undocumented in authoritative sources. No major campaigns, high-profile victims, or significant law enforcement actions against Arcusmedia have been publicly reported by CISA, FBI, or established threat intelligence organizations. Current operational status appears active based on the recent emergence timeframe, though comprehensive threat intelligence profiles from reputable sources have not yet been published given the group's recent appearance in the threat landscape. The group has been linked to 105 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on May 15, 2024; most recent post July 14, 2026. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: arcus media.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 3, 2025LINKGROUP listed by Arcusmediaon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Arcusmedia

Arcusmedia has been linked to 105 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Arcusmedia dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Financial Services sector, which has 1,184 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, LINKGROUP is reported in South Africa, a country with 52 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Arcusmedia means LINKGROUP 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, ECS-CSIRT (South Africa), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Arcusmedia'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.