Skip to main content
Darkfield

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Lake Dallas Independent School District

Claimed by Royal · listed 3 years ago

39m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedApr 24, 2023
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Royal
Status
Data leaked
Country
United States
Sector
Education
Listed on leak site
Apr 24, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Lake Dallas Independent School District (LDISD) is a public K-12 school district located in Lake Dallas, Texas. It serves a growing student population with a range of academic programs, career and technical education, fine arts, and special programs. The district is governed by a Board of Trustees and led by Superintendent Dr. Kristin N. Brown.

Industry
K-12 Public Education
Address
Lake Dallas, Texas, United States

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The group claims confirmed exfiltration of regulated sensitive data at scale, including SSNs and passport information belonging to minors (students) and staff of a public school district, which constitutes PII of a vulnerable population subject to FERPA and state privacy regulations.

The Royal ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated gigabytes of personal information belonging to students and staff, including hundreds of Social Security Numbers and passport information, and states this data will be published publicly.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Student personally identifiable information (PII)
  • Staff personally identifiable information (PII)
  • Social Security Numbers (SSNs)
  • Passport information

What the group claims

Lake Dallas Independent School District has a vibrant, growing student population, an excellent array of programs, a strong curriculum, and a progressive, innovative atmosphere. Seems like everything is on the best level but its not. Gygabytes of students' and their staff personal information is not a thing to worry about. A few hundreds of SSNs and array of passport information will be available here on Monday. This is the result of being non-progressive in cybersecurity.Enjoy!

Sources

Source

Indexed 3 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.

Is this your supplier? Your competitor? You?

Pro plans monitor your domain, corporate emails, and crypto wallets across every new ransomware leak-site post, breach dump and Telegram callout — alerts within 5 minutes.

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

  • April 24, 2023Lake Dallas Independent School District 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 Education sector, which has 1,082 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Lake Dallas Independent School District is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Royal means Lake Dallas Independent School District 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 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.