Was Access Group hit by ransomware?

Access Group was listed by the Cicada3301 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 Cicada3301 ransomware group?

Cicada3301 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 Access Group breach?

Cicada3301 published data attributed to Access Group. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Access Group

Claimed by Cicada3301 · listed 2 years ago

25m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJun 20, 2024
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Cicada3301
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Financial
Listed on leak site: Jun 20, 2024

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The Access Group is a UK-based provider of AI-powered business management software and cloud platforms headquartered in Leicestershire. They serve mid-sized organizations across commercial and not-for-profit sectors, offering productivity and efficiency solutions that integrate customer data across core business systems.

Industry: Business Management Software & Cloud Platforms
Address: Leicestershire, United Kingdom

Attack summary

Severity: high — Confirmed data exfiltration from a software/SaaS provider with access to customer data across multiple organizations (commercial and not-for-profit). Potential exposure of business intelligence and customer records at scale, though specific data types are not enumerated.

Cicada3301 claims to have exfiltrated data from The Access Group and published it to their leak site. The group advertises a download link but the specific data categories and scope are not detailed in the available excerpt.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

business data
customer information
integrated business system data

What the group claims

The Access Group is headquartered in Leicestershire, United Kingdom, a provider of business software to mid-sized UK organizations. Offering custom ers across commercial and not-for-profit sectors with productivity and efficiency solutions in the IT field. Providing cloud platforms that assist customers data to be integrated across core business systems. Downloads: http://cicadacnft7gcgnveb7wjm6pjpjcjcsugogmlrat7u7pcel3iwb7bhyd.onion/access-dataleak

Sources

Source

Indexed 2 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 Cicada3301

Cicada3301 is a recently emerged ransomware group that began operations in June 2024, primarily motivated by financial gain through extortion activities targeting organizations across multiple sectors. The group's origin and affiliations remain largely undocumented in public threat intelligence reporting, with limited information available regarding their operational structure or potential connections to other cybercriminal organizations. Based on observed targeting patterns, Cicada3301 has demonstrated a preference for attacking business services, technology, manufacturing, and financial sector organizations, with their operations concentrated primarily in English-speaking countries including the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, as well as extending to Spain and Singapore. The group has successfully compromised approximately 75 known victims since their emergence, though specific details regarding their attack methodologies, initial access vectors, encryption techniques, and extortion tactics have not been extensively documented in publicly available threat intelligence reports from major cybersecurity firms or government agencies. Given the limited public documentation available from CISA, FBI, Mandiant, or other reputable security researchers, the group's current operational status, technical capabilities, and specific attack infrastructure remain largely uncharacterized in open-source intelligence reporting. As of the most recent observations, Cicada3301 appears to remain active in conducting ransomware operations, though comprehensive analysis of their tactics, techniques, and procedures awaits more detailed public reporting from established threat intelligence sources. The group has been linked to 75 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on June 20, 2024; most recent post September 4, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

June 20, 2024Access Group listed by Cicada3301on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Cicada3301

Cicada3301 has been linked to 75 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Cicada3301 dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Financial sector, which has 426 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Access Group is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 1,217 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Cicada3301 means Access Group 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 Cicada3301'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.