Was Linney hit by ransomware?

Linney was listed by the dunghill 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 dunghill ransomware group?

dunghill 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 Linney breach?

dunghill published data attributed to Linney. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Linney

Claimed by Dunghill · listed 1 year ago

14m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedApr 27, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Dunghill
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Listed on leak site: Apr 27, 2025

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Linney is a sixth-generation marketing services group founded in 1851, headquartered in Mansfield, UK. They provide multichannel marketing solutions including graphic design, brand strategy, copywriting, social media, web design, video production, and analytics. Major clients include McDonald's (for over a decade) and Starbucks.

Industry: Marketing Services & Creative Agency
Address: Adamsway, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, NG18 4FW, United Kingdom
Founded: 1851

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Confirmed data exfiltration of a marketing services firm with access to sensitive client campaign details and strategic information (McDonald's, Starbucks); however, no specific regulated data categories (PII, financial records, medical data) are mentioned. No proof files are advertised in the truncated post.

The dunghill group claims to have breached Linney and exfiltrated data. The leak post does not specify what data categories were accessed or the scope of exfiltration.

medium

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Client project files
Marketing campaign materials
Brand strategy documents
Client communications

What the group claims

Linney is a sixth generation, world-class, multichannel marketing services group. It offers graphic design, brand strategy, copywriting, social media campaigns, website design and build, data analysis, content scheduling, prototyping, eCommerce integrations, film editing and video production, reporting and analytics, and other solutions. For more than a decade, Linney has produced and managed marketing campaigns within McDonald's restaurants. The company is currently preparing a marketing campaign for Starbucks in the spring of 2025.

Sources

Victim sitelinney.com
Leak posthttp://nsalewdnfclsowcal6kn5csm4ryqmfpijznxwictukhrgvz2vbmjjjyd.onion/lot14.html

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 dunghill

The dunghill ransomware group is a relatively new financially-motivated cybercriminal operation that emerged in April 2023, with documented attacks against 16 victims across multiple countries and sectors. Based on limited public reporting, the group's origin and affiliations remain unclear, though their targeting patterns suggest they operate as an independent entity rather than a established ransomware-as-a-service operation. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting business services and technology sectors, with attacks documented across the United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, Bolivia, and Taiwan, indicating either a broad opportunistic approach or the use of initial access brokers to expand their geographic reach. While specific technical details about their attack methodology, encryption techniques, and extortion tactics have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports, their multi-country victim distribution suggests they employ common initial access vectors such as phishing, credential theft, or exploitation of internet-facing vulnerabilities. No major high-profile attacks or significant law enforcement actions against the dunghill group have been publicly reported, likely due to their recent emergence and relatively small victim count compared to more established ransomware operations. As of current reporting, the group appears to remain active with limited public visibility into their operations. The group has been linked to 16 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 10, 2023; most recent post July 1, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

April 27, 2025Linney listed by dunghillon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by dunghill

dunghill has been linked to 16 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full dunghill dossier →

Sector and geography

Geographically, Linney is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 1,217 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by dunghill means Linney 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 dunghill'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.