Hellcat is a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in October 2024, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their targeting patterns across multiple high-value sectors. The group's origin and potential state affiliations remain unclear due to their recent emergence, though their broad geographic targeting spanning the United States, China, Germany, France, and Israel suggests either a sophisticated international operation or the use of ransomware-as-a-service infrastructure. Limited public documentation exists regarding Hellcat's specific attack methodologies, encryption techniques, or whether they employ double extortion tactics involving data exfiltration prior to encryption, as major cybersecurity firms and government agencies have yet to publish detailed technical analyses of their operations. With only 20 documented victims to date, the group has not yet conducted any widely publicized major campaigns or drawn significant law enforcement attention, though their targeting of technology, education, government, and business services sectors indicates a focus on organizations likely to possess valuable data and have strong incentives to pay ransoms. Hellcat remains active as of current reporting, though their limited operational footprint and recent emergence make long-term assessment of their capabilities and persistence difficult to determine. The group has been linked to 20 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 25, 2024; most recent post May 25, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Technology sector, which has 2,524 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, HighWire Press is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.
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.
