Was Montmorency College hit by ransomware?

Montmorency College was listed by the Avoslocker ransomware operation (Canada), 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 Avoslocker ransomware group?

Avoslocker 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 Montmorency College breach?

Avoslocker published data attributed to Montmorency College (~8 TB). Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Collège Montmorency

listed as Montmorency College · Claimed by Avoslocker · listed 4 years ago

8 TB

Data size

43m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedDec 26, 2022
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Avoslocker
Status: Data leaked
Country: Canada
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Dec 26, 2022
Data size: 8 TB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Collège Montmorency is a French-language public CÉGEP (Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel) located in Laval, Quebec, Canada. It offers pre-university and technical programs to thousands of students and is one of the larger CEGEPs in the province. The institution is publicly funded and operates under the Quebec Ministry of Education.

Industry: Post-Secondary Education (CÉGEP)
Address: 475 Boulevard de l'Avenir, Laval, Quebec H7N 5H9, Canada
Employees: 501-1000
Founded: 1969

Attack summary

Severity: critical — 8 TB of confirmed exfiltrated data from a post-secondary educational institution contains large-scale PII (student and staff personal records) at significant volume, with the college itself acknowledging possible personal data theft, meeting the threshold for critical severity.

AvosLocker claims to have exfiltrated approximately 8 TB of personal data from Collège Montmorency and threatened to publish the data in full unless the Board of Directors made contact. The college's own management acknowledged a possible theft of personal data, corroborating the exfiltration claim.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Personal data of students and/or staff
Institutional records
Administrative files

What the group claims

Cyberattack at Collège Montmorency: ~8TB personal data has been compromised by AVOSLOCKER. Board of Directors should contact with us immediately to avoid the full leak on our blog. News and facts about Cyberattack: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/education/2022-05-21/cyberattaque-au-college-montmorency/la-direction-evoque-un-possible-vol-de-donnees-personnelles.php https://thecanadian.news/cyberattack-at-college-montmorency-personal-data-has-been-compromised/ https://www.academica.ca/top-ten/cyberattacks-strike-coll%C3%A8ge-montmorency-us-institution https://oicanadian.com/college-montmorency-victim-of-an-alleged-cyberattack/ https://www.spamchronicles.com/college-montmorency-victim-of-a-cyber-attack/ https://actualnewsmagazine.com/english/cyberattack-at-montmorency-college-the-management-evokes-a-possible-theft-of-personal-data/

Source

Indexed 4 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 Avoslocker

**Overview**: AvosLocker is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in June 2021, operating as both a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform and conducting direct attacks against organizations worldwide. The group has demonstrated sophisticated capabilities and has targeted over 70 victims across multiple critical sectors. **Origin & Affiliation**: While the exact country of origin remains unclear, AvosLocker operates as a RaaS model, recruiting affiliates to conduct attacks using their ransomware payload and infrastructure. The group has shown no clear ties to state-sponsored activities, appearing to be purely profit-driven cybercriminals. **Attack Methodology**: AvosLocker typically gains initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials, VPN vulnerabilities, and phishing campaigns, subsequently deploying tools like Cobalt Strike for lateral movement and persistence. The group employs double extortion tactics, stealing sensitive data before encrypting systems and threatening to publish the information on their leak site if ransom demands are not met. Their ransomware uses strong encryption algorithms and includes capabilities to terminate security processes and delete shadow copies to prevent recovery. **Notable Campaigns**: The group has particularly targeted critical infrastructure sectors including education, manufacturing, finance, healthcare, and transportation, with significant attacks reported against organizations in the United States, Germany, Singapore, Canada, and France. CISA and FBI have issued joint advisories warning about AvosLocker's targeting of critical infrastructure, highlighting the group's impact on essential services. **Current Status**: As of recent threat intelligence reporting, AvosLocker remains active, continuing to recruit affiliates and conduct ransomware operations against organizations globally. The group has been linked to 70 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on June 13, 2021; most recent post February 11, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: Avos.

Timeline of this disclosure

December 26, 2022Montmorency College listed by Avoslockeron the group's public leak site

Data size: 8 TB

Other recent disclosures by Avoslocker

Avoslocker has been linked to 70 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Avoslocker dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,082 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Montmorency College is reported in Canada, a country with 1,055 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Avoslocker means Montmorency College 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, CCCS (Canada), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Avoslocker'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.