Was nottingham.ac.uk hit by ransomware?

nottingham.ac.uk was listed by the shinyhunters 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 shinyhunters ransomware group?

shinyhunters 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 nottingham.ac.uk breach?

shinyhunters published data attributed to nottingham.ac.uk. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

University of Nottingham

listed as nottingham.ac.uk · Claimed by Shinyhunters · listed 4 days ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJun 9, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Shinyhunters
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Jun 9, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The University of Nottingham is a major UK-based research university ranked in the top 20 universities in the UK and top 100 globally (QS 2026). It operates multiple campuses including locations in Malaysia and China, offering undergraduate, postgraduate, and research degree programmes alongside research and innovation services.

Industry: Higher Education & University Services
Address: Nottingham, United Kingdom (with campuses in Malaysia and China)
Employees: 3000-4000
Founded: 1928

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration and publication of 19+ GB of sensitive financial and personal data including credit card details, student finance information, and PII (names, addresses, phone numbers, DoB) affecting a major educational institution with thousands of students and staff across multiple countries. Financial and identity theft risk is substantial.

ShinyHunters claims to have exfiltrated over 40 GB (compressed to 19+ GB) of billing, payment, and student finance records from the University of Nottingham and its international campuses. The group asserts access to credit card details, payment information, student finance data, and campus portal exports containing personal identifiers.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

billing and payment records
credit card and payment details
student finance data
campus portal exports
payer contact information
transaction records
IP addresses
full names
home addresses
postcodes
email addresses
phone numbers
dates of birth
internal campus data

What the group claims

Over 40 GB of billing and payment records, credit card and payment details, student finance data, and campus portal exports from the University of Nottingham and its Malaysia and China campuses was compromised, including payer contact information, transaction amounts, IP addresses, full names, home addresses, postcodes, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and other internal campus data. | Size: 19GB+ (compressed) | Updated: 10 June 2026 | SHA256: d3aaaf06dd857deec3866072cc2876780623d880992e8d735094db4779535873

Sources

Victim sitenottingham.ac.uk

Source

Indexed 4 days 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 shinyhunters

Based on the limited publicly available information, shinyhunters appears to be a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in October 2025, primarily motivated by financial gain through extortion activities targeting organizations across multiple sectors. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain unclear due to their recent emergence, and there is insufficient public documentation to determine whether they operate as a Ransomware-as-a-Service model or as an independent entity. Their attack methodology and specific technical capabilities have not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence firms, though their targeting pattern suggests a broad opportunistic approach rather than sector-specific specialization. The group has reportedly victimized approximately 77 organizations, with primary targeting focused on the United States, France, Japan, Germany, and Australia, showing particular interest in consumer services, technology, financial services, transportation and logistics, and education sectors. Given the group's very recent emergence in late 2025, there are no widely reported major campaigns or high-profile incidents documented by established security research organizations, and no known law enforcement actions have been publicly reported against this group. The current operational status of shinyhunters remains active based on available reporting, though comprehensive threat intelligence profiles from major security firms like Mandiant, CrowdStrike, or government agencies have not yet been published due to the group's recent appearance in the threat landscape. The group has been linked to 122 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 3, 2025; most recent post June 12, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

June 9, 2026nottingham.ac.uk listed by shinyhunterson the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by shinyhunters

shinyhunters has been linked to 122 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full shinyhunters dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 694 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, nottingham.ac.uk is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 309 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by shinyhunters means nottingham.ac.uk 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.
Monitor for the data appearing on shinyhunters'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.