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MERS Missouri Goodwill Industries

Claimed by Royal · listed 3 years ago

40m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedMar 29, 2023
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Royal
Status
Data leaked
Country
United States
Sector
Non-Profit
Listed on leak site
Mar 29, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

MERS Missouri Goodwill Industries is a non-profit organization based in Missouri, United States, operating under the broader Goodwill Industries network. The organization focuses on workforce development, job training, and employment services for individuals with disabilities and other barriers to employment, alongside operating thrift retail stores to fund those programs.

Industry
Non-Profit Workforce Development & Retail Thrift

Attack summary

Severity: high — The group explicitly references consumer data belonging to a non-profit that serves vulnerable populations (people with disabilities, those seeking employment assistance), and the status is 'data_published', indicating confirmed exfiltration and public release of potentially sensitive PII.

The Royal ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated business and consumer data from MERS Missouri Goodwill Industries and is offering to share files with interested parties, suggesting data has been published or is being distributed without specifying an encryption component.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Consumer/customer data
  • Business files

What the group claims

MERS Industries are known for their will to help people. We suppose they need to improve their consumers data security if they really work to help people. If you are interested to take a closer look at their business, we are ready to share some info with you.You can find much interesting in the files!

Sources

Source

Indexed 3 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 Royal

Royal is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in November 2022, quickly establishing itself as a significant threat with over 200 documented victims across multiple sectors. The group is believed to operate independently rather than as a ransomware-as-a-service model, though their exact country of origin remains unclear based on publicly available intelligence. Royal primarily gains initial access through phishing campaigns and exploitation of remote desktop protocols, subsequently deploying custom ransomware that encrypts victim files while exfiltrating sensitive data for double extortion tactics. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting critical infrastructure and public services, with notable attacks against educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and government entities primarily in the United States, though they have also significantly impacted organizations across Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France. Their encryption methodology involves custom-built malware that systematically encrypts files while maintaining persistence on compromised networks. As of recent reporting from federal agencies including CISA and FBI advisories, Royal remains an active threat with ongoing campaigns targeting organizations across their preferred sectors, particularly focusing on entities with limited cybersecurity resources that may be more likely to pay ransom demands. The group has been linked to 211 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 4, 2022; most recent post July 19, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • March 29, 2023MERS Missouri Goodwill Industries listed by Royalon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Royal

Royal has been linked to 211 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Royal dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Non-Profit sector, which has 45 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, MERS Missouri Goodwill Industries is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Royal means MERS Missouri Goodwill Industries 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 Royal'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.