Disclosure context

About Vicesociety

Vicesociety is a ransomware group that emerged in May 2021, primarily motivated by financial gain through targeting critical infrastructure and public service organizations. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain largely undetermined by public threat intelligence reporting, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation rather than a established RaaS model. Vicesociety primarily gains initial access through exploitation of public-facing applications and credential-based attacks, with documented cases showing they particularly focus on compromising remote access services and vulnerable web applications before deploying their ransomware payload across victim networks. The group has demonstrated a clear preference for targeting educational institutions, government agencies, and healthcare organizations, with their 188 documented victims concentrated heavily in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Spain, indicating a focus on English-speaking and Western European entities. While specific high-profile campaigns have not been extensively detailed in major public threat intelligence reports from CISA or FBI advisories, the group's consistent targeting of critical sectors like education and healthcare has drawn attention from security researchers monitoring threats to essential services. Vicesociety remains active as of recent threat intelligence assessments, continuing their operations against similar target sectors with no documented law enforcement disruption or significant operational changes. The group has been linked to 188 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on May 31, 2021; most recent post June 20, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

January 26, 2023Bristol Community College listed by Vicesocietyon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 694 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Bristol Community College is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

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.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Bristol Community College

Claimed by Vicesociety · listed 3 years ago

40m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Jan 26, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Vicesociety
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Jan 26, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Bristol Community College is a comprehensive public community college based in Massachusetts, with campuses in Fall River, Attleboro, New Bedford, Taunton, and online. It offers more than 117 career and transfer programs leading to associate degrees and certificates. The college serves a broad student population and is free for eligible Massachusetts residents.

Industry: Higher Education (Community College)
Address: Fall River, Massachusetts, United States
Employees: 201-500
Founded: 1966

Attack summary

Severity: high — Vice Society has published data (confirmed exfiltration) from a public educational institution, which almost certainly includes student PII, academic records, and potentially financial aid data affecting a large number of individuals, consistent with a high-severity disclosure.

Vice Society claims to have exfiltrated data from Bristol Community College and has published the data, as indicated by the 'data_published' disclosure status. The specific categories of data at stake are not detailed in the leak post excerpt.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Faculty and staff records
Financial aid information
Academic records
Institutional administrative data

What the group claims

Bristol Community College is a comprehensive, public community college offering more than 130 career and transfer programs of study that lead to an associate degree in science, arts, applied sciences, and certificates of accomplishment or achievement.

Sources

Victim sitebristolcc.edu/

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.