Was Rural Workforce Agency hit by ransomware?

Rural Workforce Agency was listed by the Nokoyawa ransomware operation (Australia), 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 Nokoyawa ransomware group?

Nokoyawa 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 Rural Workforce Agency breach?

Nokoyawa published data attributed to Rural Workforce Agency. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Rural Workforce Agency Victoria (RWAV)

listed as Rural Workforce Agency · Claimed by Nokoyawa · listed 3 years ago

38m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 23, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Nokoyawa
Status: Data leaked
Country: Australia
Sector: Healthcare
Listed on leak site: May 23, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Rural Workforce Agency Victoria (RWAV) is a not-for-profit, government-funded organisation based in Victoria, Australia. It works to improve healthcare access for rural, regional, and Aboriginal communities by supporting the recruitment, retention, and placement of GPs, nurses, allied health professionals, and other clinicians. RWAV also administers grants, outreach programs, workforce data initiatives, and scholarships across Victoria.

Industry: Rural & Regional Healthcare Workforce Services
Address: Victoria, Australia

Attack summary

Severity: high — RWAV handles sensitive personal and workforce data for health professionals and Aboriginal/rural communities, including potential PII of clinicians and grant recipients. Data has been confirmed published by the group, indicating successful exfiltration of significant business and potentially regulated data from a government-funded healthcare organisation.

The Nokoyawa ransomware group claims to have attacked RWAV and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), suggesting exfiltration of organisational data; no ransom amount or specific data volume was stated in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Health professional recruitment records
GP and nurse vacancy/placement data
Grant applicant and recipient information
Workforce program participant data
Aboriginal and First Peoples community health records
Outreach service provider information
Organisational administrative documents

What the group claims

Rural Workforce Agency Victoria (RWAV) is a not-for-profit government funded organization improving health care for rural, regional and Aboriginal communities in Victoria. RWAV provides a range of activities and support to improve the recruitment and retention of health professionals...

Sources

Victim siterwav.com.au/
Leak posthttp://nokoleakb76znymx443veg4n6fytx6spck6pc7nkr4dvfuygpub6jsid.onion/leak/644a8f25f675292f2b858eb0

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.

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Disclosure context

About Nokoyawa

Nokoyawa is a ransomware group that emerged in December 2022, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors including healthcare, non-profit, education, finance, and energy. The group has claimed at least 36 victims since its emergence, with attacks predominantly focused on the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and the Philippines. While detailed technical analysis of Nokoyawa's operations remains limited in public reporting, the group appears to follow conventional ransomware tactics targeting critical infrastructure and essential services sectors. Their targeting of healthcare and educational institutions suggests they operate without the sector restrictions that some other ransomware groups have adopted. Notable campaigns include attacks across their preferred geographic regions, though specific high-profile incidents have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reporting from major security firms. As of current reporting, Nokoyawa appears to remain an active threat, though the group's relatively recent emergence means long-term operational patterns and potential law enforcement disruption efforts are still developing. The group has been linked to 36 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 9, 2022; most recent post August 4, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 23, 2023Rural Workforce Agency listed by Nokoyawaon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Nokoyawa

Nokoyawa has been linked to 36 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Nokoyawa dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Healthcare sector, which has 2,600 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Rural Workforce Agency is reported in Australia, a country with 455 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Nokoyawa means Rural Workforce Agency 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, ACSC (Australia), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Nokoyawa'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.