Was USGS hit by ransomware?

USGS was listed by the Fog 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 Fog ransomware group?

Fog 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 USGS breach?

Fog published data attributed to USGS. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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USGS

Claimed by Fog · listed 1 year ago

16m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 6, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Fog
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Public Sector
Listed on leak site: Mar 6, 2025

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is a scientific agency of the United States Department of the Interior. It conducts research and mapping across geology, water resources, natural hazards, ecosystems, energy, and minerals. USGS operates numerous observatories, laboratories, and data centers across the nation.

Industry: Government – Scientific Research & Survey
Address: 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston, VA 20192
Founded: 1879

Attack summary

Severity: high — USGS is critical U.S. government infrastructure responsible for scientific data underpinning national resource management, hazard response, and public safety. Compromise of development systems and code repositories poses significant risk to system integrity and operational continuity, even without confirmed PII exfiltration.

Fog group claims to have accessed USGS systems and references 'The 19 biggest gitlabs' in their leak post, suggesting exfiltration of code repositories or development infrastructure. No specific data categories or operational impact details are provided in the truncated post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Git repositories
Source code
Development infrastructure

What the group claims

Extract from The 19 biggest gitlabs

Sources

Victim siteusgs.gov
Leak posthttp://xbkv2qey6u3gd3qxcojynrt4h5sgrhkar6whuo74wo63hijnn677jnyd.onion/posts/67c8c37103e546ad96cc6156/

Source

Indexed 1 year 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 Fog

Fog is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in July 2024, operating with apparent financial motivations and demonstrating rapid expansion in their victim targeting across multiple geographic regions and industry sectors. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain unclear due to their recent emergence, though their operational patterns suggest they likely operate independently rather than as part of an established Ransomware-as-a-Service ecosystem. Given the limited public documentation from major security agencies and researchers due to the group's recent appearance, specific details about their attack methodology, initial access vectors, and encryption techniques have not yet been comprehensively analyzed or reported by authoritative sources such as CISA, FBI, or major threat intelligence firms. The group has reportedly victimized 189 organizations primarily across the United States, Germany, France, Australia, and Brazil, with their attacks predominantly targeting the technology sector, followed by education, business services, and manufacturing industries, though no specific high-profile campaigns or record ransom demands have been publicly documented by major security researchers at this time. As of current reporting, Fog appears to remain active given their recent emergence and ongoing victim acquisition patterns observed throughout 2024. The group has been linked to 189 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on July 16, 2024; most recent post March 20, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 6, 2025USGS listed by Fogon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Fog

Fog has been linked to 189 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Fog dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Public Sector sector, which has 466 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, USGS is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Fog means USGS 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 Fog'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.