Was UK government hit by ransomware?

UK government was listed by the Snatch 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 Snatch ransomware group?

Snatch 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 UK government breach?

Snatch published data attributed to UK government. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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UK government

Claimed by Snatch · listed 2 years ago

25m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 1, 2024
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Snatch
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Government
Listed on leak site: May 1, 2024

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

UK government, the executive and legislative authority of the United Kingdom. Central government operations include the Prime Minister's Office, Cabinet departments, and security agencies.

Industry: Government

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Alleged exfiltration of personnel data for senior government, defence, intelligence (MI6), and law enforcement officials constitutes exposure of information about individuals in critical national security roles. This is a direct threat to operational security and personal safety of individuals responsible for state security.

Snatch claims to have exfiltrated sensitive government data, including names and titles of senior officials spanning the Prime Minister's Office, Cabinet (Defence, Treasury), and UK intelligence (MI6) and law enforcement (Metropolitan Police).

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Names of senior government officials
Government contact/personnel records
Intelligence agency personnel records
Law enforcement leadership records

What the group claims

More information in our telegram channel https://t.me/snatch_teamRishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the UKGrant Shapps, Secretary of State for DefenceJeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the ExchequerAlexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, former Prime Minister of the UKRichard Moore, the Chief of MI6, the UK Secret Intelligence ServiceFelicity Oswald OBE, Interim Chief Executive OfficerSir Mark Peter Rowley QPM, head of London police

Sources

Leak posthttp://hl66646wtlp2naoqnhattngigjp5palgqmbwixepcjyq5i534acgqyad.onion/news.php?id=9a1a5567-128d-48b2-ac29-a31d6078c7fa

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 Snatch

Snatch is a ransomware group that emerged in November 2021, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors including business services, government, education, manufacturing, and healthcare. The group has compromised at least 142 known victims, with their attacks concentrated primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and France. Little is publicly documented about Snatch's specific country of origin or affiliations with other cybercriminal organizations, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation. The group's attack methodology and specific technical details regarding initial access vectors, encryption methods, and data exfiltration practices have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports from major security firms or government agencies. While Snatch has maintained a notable victim count across diverse geographic regions and industry sectors, there are no widely reported major campaigns or high-profile attacks that have drawn significant public attention or law enforcement action. Based on available public information, Snatch appears to remain an active ransomware operation as of recent reporting periods, though comprehensive details about their current operational status and recent activities are limited in open-source intelligence. The group has been linked to 142 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 29, 2021; most recent post May 16, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 1, 2024UK government listed by Snatchon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Snatch

Snatch has been linked to 142 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Snatch dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Government sector, which has 685 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, UK government is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 1,217 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Snatch means UK government 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 Snatch'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.