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Benson Kearley IFG - Insurance Brokers & Financial Advisors

Claimed by BianLian · listed 2 years ago

23m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedAug 14, 2024
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
BianLian
Status
Data leaked
Country
Canada
Sector
Financial
Listed on leak site
Aug 14, 2024

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Benson Kearley IFG is an insurance brokerage and financial advisory firm based in Ontario, Canada. They provide personal insurance (auto, home, condominium, tenant, watercraft), commercial insurance (including cyber insurance), and financial services (life insurance, financial planning, group benefits). They operate as an independent broker partnering with multiple insurance carriers across Ontario.

Industry
Insurance Brokerage & Financial Services

Attack summary

Severity: high — Confirmed data exfiltration by ransomware operator of an insurance/financial services firm handling sensitive client PII, financial data, and insurance information at scale. No ransom demand noted but data published, indicating operational compromise of regulated financial services entity.

BianLian claims to have compromised Benson Kearley IFG and exfiltrated data. The group has published data as part of their disclosure, though specific details of the data categories are not provided in the leak post excerpt.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • client personal information
  • insurance policy details
  • financial records
  • business client data

What the group claims

Benson Kearley IFG offers personal and commercial insurance, financial services, and specialty insurance across Ontario.

Sources

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 BianLian

**Overview:** BianLian is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in July 2022, quickly establishing itself as a significant threat to organizations across multiple sectors. The group operates with a primary focus on extorting victims for financial gain through data encryption and exfiltration tactics. **Origin & Affiliation:** While the exact country of origin remains unconfirmed by public reporting, BianLian appears to operate as an independent ransomware group rather than following a traditional Ransomware-as-a-Service model. Security researchers have not established definitive links between BianLian and other known ransomware families or cybercriminal organizations. **Attack Methodology:** BianLian typically gains initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials and exploits of public-facing applications, according to security researchers. The group employs double extortion tactics, stealing sensitive data before encrypting victim systems, and threatens to publish exfiltrated information on their leak site if ransom demands are not met. Their operations demonstrate sophisticated understanding of network environments and data exfiltration techniques. **Notable Campaigns:** Since its emergence, BianLian has successfully compromised over 670 organizations globally, with documented cases spanning critical infrastructure and major corporations across their primary target sectors. The group has been particularly active in targeting healthcare organizations, prompting attention from cybersecurity agencies due to the critical nature of these attacks. **Current Status:** As of recent threat intelligence reporting, BianLian remains an active ransomware threat, continuing to target organizations primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Australia. The group has been linked to 668 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on July 14, 2022; most recent post March 31, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: Hydra.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • August 14, 2024Benson Kearley IFG - Insurance Brokers & Financial Advisors listed by BianLianon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by BianLian

BianLian has been linked to 668 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full BianLian dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Financial sector, which has 426 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Benson Kearley IFG - Insurance Brokers & Financial Advisors is reported in Canada, a country with 1,055 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by BianLian means Benson Kearley IFG - Insurance Brokers & Financial Advisors 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 BianLian'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.