Was Ruskin College Oxford hit by ransomware?

Ruskin College Oxford was listed by the beast 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 beast ransomware group?

beast 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 Ruskin College Oxford breach?

beast published data attributed to Ruskin College Oxford. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Ruskin College Oxford

Claimed by Beast · listed 3 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJun 5, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Beast
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Jun 5, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Ruskin College Oxford is an adult education institution offering degree programs, access courses, and short courses to learners of all ages and backgrounds. The college emphasizes career-oriented education with personalized support and small class sizes, and operates as part of the University of West London.

Industry: Higher Education

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data has been published by a ransomware group targeting an educational institution, likely involving student or staff PII. However, the leak post provides no specific inventory of sensitive data types, proof files, or operational impact details.

The 'beast' ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated data from Ruskin College Oxford and published it. No details are provided regarding the specific nature of the breach, data categories, or encryption status.

medium

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

institutional records
student/staff data

What the group claims

Ruskin College Oxford provides accessible adult learning opportunities for individuals of all ages and backgrounds, offering a variety of courses including degree programs, access courses, and short courses. The college focuses on career-oriented education, ensuring personalized support and small class sizes. As part of the University of West London, Ruskin College guarantees high-quality teaching and extensive student support.

The leak post

captured from the group's site

Ruskin College Oxford provides accessible adult learning opportunities for individuals of all ages and backgrounds, offering a variety of courses including degree programs, access courses, and short courses. The college focuses on career-oriented education, ensuring personalized support and small class sizes to help students achieve their academic and professional goals. As part of the University of West London, Ruskin College guarantees high-quality teaching and extensive student support. Their target clients include adults seeking further education, employment readiness, or personal development
P U B L I S H E D

Screenshot of the leak post

Leak screenshot for Ruskin College Oxford

Sources

Leak posthttp://beast6azu4f7fxjakiayhnssybibsgjnmy77a6duufqw5afjzfjhzuqd.onion/card/ruskin_college

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.

Is this your supplier? Your competitor? You?

Pro plans monitor your domain, corporate emails, and crypto wallets across every new ransomware leak-site post, breach dump and Telegram callout — alerts within 5 minutes.

Disclosure context

About beast

The Beast ransomware group is a relatively new threat actor that emerged in July 2025, operating with apparent financial motivations through their ransomware campaigns. With limited public documentation available from major security agencies, the group has demonstrated activity primarily targeting victims across the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, South Korea, and Argentina, accumulating approximately 65 known victims since their emergence. Their targeting pattern shows a focus on healthcare organizations, manufacturing companies, educational institutions, and construction firms, suggesting an opportunistic approach rather than highly specialized sector expertise. The group's recent emergence means there is insufficient public intelligence from CISA, FBI, Mandiant, or other established security researchers regarding their specific attack methodologies, initial access vectors, or technical capabilities. Given the timeline of their first observation in mid-2025, Beast represents an active and emerging threat with their current operational status remaining unclear due to limited threat intelligence reporting from authoritative sources. The group has been linked to 105 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on July 29, 2025; most recent post August 24, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

June 5, 2026Ruskin College Oxford listed by beaston the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by beast

beast has been linked to 105 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full beast dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,087 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Ruskin College Oxford is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 377 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by beast means Ruskin College Oxford 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 beast'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.