Was SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association hit by ransomware?

SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association was listed by the worldleaks ransomware operation (United States), 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 worldleaks ransomware group?

worldleaks 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 SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association breach?

worldleaks published data attributed to SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association

Claimed by Worldleaks · listed 3 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedApr 30, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Worldleaks
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Telecommunication
Listed on leak site: Apr 30, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association is a community-based, member-owned cooperative telecommunications provider serving the Sherwood and Hicksville areas of Ohio since 1906. It offers high-speed fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband, telephone, and streaming cable services to rural communities. The association is GIG Certified, providing gigabit broadband internet speeds to its local member base.

Industry: Rural Cooperative Telecommunications (Broadband, Phone & Cable)
Address: Sherwood, Ohio (serves Sherwood and Hicksville areas, Ohio; phone 419-899-2121)
Founded: 1906

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published (data_published status confirmed), indicating confirmed exfiltration. As a cooperative telecom provider, exposed data likely includes customer PII and billing records for rural community members, constituting significant sensitive data disclosure even without a stated data size.

The worldleaks ransomware group claims to have compromised SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), though the leak post does not specify whether encryption, exfiltration, or both occurred, nor does it detail the volume or type of data exposed.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Customer account records
Billing information
Member/subscriber PII
Internal communications
Operational/network data

Original description

AI-summarised, not from the leak post

SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association is a cooperative telecommunications provider based in the United States. It operates in the rural telecommunications industry, offering telephone and related communication services to members in the Sherwood, North Dakota area. As a mutual association, it is member-owned and focused on delivering reliable local and long-distance voice services to underserved rural communities.

Sources

Victim sitesmta.cc
Leak posthttps://worldleaksartrjm3c6vasllvgacbi5u3mgzkluehrzhk2jz4taufuid.onion/companies/5058243108

Source

Indexed 3 months 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 worldleaks

Based on the limited available data, worldleaks is a recently emerged ransomware group that was first observed in May 2025 and appears to be primarily financially motivated, having claimed 134 victims in a relatively short timeframe since its emergence. The group's origin and organizational structure remain unclear, with no publicly documented information from major cybersecurity firms or law enforcement agencies regarding their country of origin, potential affiliations, or operational model. Their targeting patterns indicate a focus on English-speaking countries, particularly the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, with additional activity observed in Germany and Japan, while their sector targeting shows a preference for healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and consumer services organizations. Due to the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation by established threat intelligence sources, specific details about their attack methodologies, encryption techniques, extortion tactics, and notable campaigns have not yet been comprehensively analyzed or reported by organizations such as CISA, FBI, or major cybersecurity research firms. The group appears to remain active as of the most recent observations, though comprehensive threat intelligence profiling awaits further analysis and documentation by established cybersecurity authorities. The group has been linked to 173 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on May 18, 2025; most recent post July 2, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

April 30, 2026SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association listed by worldleakson the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by worldleaks

worldleaks has been linked to 173 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full worldleaks dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Telecommunication sector, which has 172 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association is reported in United States, a country with 3,115 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by worldleaks means SMTA Sherwood Mutual Telephone Association 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 worldleaks'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.