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Hills Salvage and Recycling

Claimed by Royal · listed 4 years ago

42m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedJan 14, 2023
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Royal
Status
Data leaked
Country
United Kingdom
Sector
Automotive
Listed on leak site
Jan 14, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Hills Salvage and Recycling is one of the UK's largest and most specialised automotive salvage and recycling operations, originally established as a bodyshop with a garage forecourt over 50 years ago. The company began delivering parts in 1997 and launched a mail-order service in 1998. It now operates from an 11-acre site in East Gillibrands, Skelmersdale, conveniently located just off the M58.

Industry
Auto Salvage & Parts Recycling
Address
East Gillibrands, Skelmersdale, Lancashire (just off the M58), United Kingdom

Attack summary

Severity: high — The disclosure status is 'data_published', indicating Royal has already released exfiltrated data rather than merely listing the victim; this represents confirmed exfiltration of business data, warranting a high severity rating even without explicit detail on the data types.

The Royal ransomware group claims to have compromised Hills Salvage and Recycling and has published data ('data_published' status), suggesting exfiltration of company data, though no specific data volume or ransom demand has been stated in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Business operational data
  • Customer records (inferred)
  • Parts/inventory records (inferred)
  • Financial records (inferred)

What the group claims

Hills started as a bodyshop with a garage forecourt over 50 years ago. Our operation has grown rapidly in recent years, initially at our site in Burscough and now at our new home in East Gillibrands, Skelmersdale, conveniently located just off the M58.We began delivering parts in 1997 and a mail order service began the following year. We are now one of the largest and most specialised services of our type in the UK. Our move to a giant 11 acre site in Skelmersdale confirms this and redifines the professionalism of salvage and recycling business in Britain today.

Sources

Source

Indexed 4 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 Royal

Royal is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in November 2022, quickly establishing itself as a significant threat with over 200 documented victims across multiple sectors. The group is believed to operate independently rather than as a ransomware-as-a-service model, though their exact country of origin remains unclear based on publicly available intelligence. Royal primarily gains initial access through phishing campaigns and exploitation of remote desktop protocols, subsequently deploying custom ransomware that encrypts victim files while exfiltrating sensitive data for double extortion tactics. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting critical infrastructure and public services, with notable attacks against educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and government entities primarily in the United States, though they have also significantly impacted organizations across Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France. Their encryption methodology involves custom-built malware that systematically encrypts files while maintaining persistence on compromised networks. As of recent reporting from federal agencies including CISA and FBI advisories, Royal remains an active threat with ongoing campaigns targeting organizations across their preferred sectors, particularly focusing on entities with limited cybersecurity resources that may be more likely to pay ransom demands. The group has been linked to 211 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 4, 2022; most recent post July 19, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • January 14, 2023Hills Salvage and Recycling listed by Royalon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Royal

Royal has been linked to 211 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Royal dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Automotive sector, which has 101 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Hills Salvage and Recycling is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 1,217 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Royal means Hills Salvage and Recycling 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 Royal'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.