Was Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead hit by ransomware?

Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead was listed by the Medusa 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 Medusa ransomware group?

Medusa 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 Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead breach?

Medusa published data attributed to Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead, around 684 employees records. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead

Claimed by Medusa · listed 1 year ago

684 employees

Records

16m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedFeb 22, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Medusa
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Public Sector
Listed on leak site: Feb 22, 2025
Records: 684 employees

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead is a local authority serving the borough of Gateshead in Tyne and Wear, England, as part of the Tyneside conurbation. The council administers services across Gateshead and surrounding areas including Rowlands Gill, Whickham, Blaydon, Ryton, Felling, Birtley, Pelaw, Dunston and Low Fell, with a population of approximately 196,154 residents.

Industry: Local Government & Public Administration
Address: 12 Gladstone Terrace, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, NE8 4DY, United Kingdom
Employees: 684

Attack summary

Severity: high — Attack on UK local government authority with confirmed data publication; local councils hold significant volumes of sensitive PII (resident records, benefit data, planning applications). Lack of specific proof inventory details prevents 'critical' classification, but the target is inherently sensitive infrastructure.

Medusa claims to have compromised the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead. The leak post indicates data has been published but provides no specific details on the nature of exfiltration, encryption, or the scope of data involved.

high

What the group claims

The Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, England. It includes Gateshead, Rowlands Gill, Whickham, Blaydon, Ryton, Felling, Birtley, Pelaw, Dunston and Low Fell. The borough forms part of the Tyneside conurbation, centred on Newcastle upon Tyne. At the 2021 census, the borough had a population of 196154. Gateshead Council office is located in 12 Gladstone Ter, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, NE8 4DY, United Kingdom and has 684 employees.

Sources

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 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

February 22, 2025Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead listed by Medusaon the group's public leak site

Records: 684 employees

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 Public Sector sector, which has 466 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 1,217 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Medusa means Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead 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 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.