Was GreenLight Biosciences hit by ransomware?

GreenLight Biosciences was listed by the Blackbyte 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 Blackbyte ransomware group?

Blackbyte 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 GreenLight Biosciences breach?

Blackbyte published data attributed to GreenLight Biosciences. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

GreenLight Biosciences

Claimed by Blackbyte · listed 1 year ago

12m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJul 16, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Blackbyte
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Technology
Listed on leak site: Jul 16, 2025

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

GreenLight Biosciences is a synthetic biology company founded in 2008 and based in Medford, Massachusetts. The company develops a proprietary cell-free RNA production platform for creating high-performing biological products, with a current focus on RNA-based solutions for sustainable agriculture, including insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Their commercialized products include Calantha (Colorado potato beetle control) and Norroa (Varroa mite treatment for honeybees).

Industry: Synthetic Biology & Agricultural Biotechnology
Address: Medford, Massachusetts, United States
Founded: 2008

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data has been published by the threat actor, but no proof files, screenshots, or data inventory details are evident in the available leak post. The company handles proprietary synthetic biology research and product pipeline information which could be valuable intellectual property, but no regulated data categories (PII at scale, medical records, financial data) are confirmed exposed.

Blackbyte claims to have compromised GreenLight Biosciences and published data from the breach. No specific details on the scope of exfiltration, operational impact, or data categories are provided in the leak post excerpt.

medium

What the group claims

Founded in 2008, GreenLight Bioscience is a pre-commercial stage synthetic biology company with a proprietary cell-free ribonucleic acid (RNA) production platform for the discovery, development and commercialization of high-performing products. The company is based in Medford, Massachusetts.

Sources

Victim sitegreenlightbiosciences.com

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.

Is this your supplier? Your competitor? You?

Pro plans monitor your domain, corporate emails, and crypto wallets across every new ransomware leak-site post, breach dump and Telegram callout — alerts within 5 minutes.

Disclosure context

About Blackbyte

BlackByte is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that emerged in October 2021, primarily motivated by financial gain through double extortion tactics targeting organizations across multiple sectors. The group is suspected to operate from Russia or former Soviet states based on their use of Russian-language forums and avoidance of targeting organizations in Commonwealth of Independent States countries, though they maintain no confirmed links to other established ransomware families. BlackByte operators typically gain initial access through vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers, phishing campaigns, and exploitation of remote desktop protocol (RDP) services, employing tools such as Cobalt Strike for lateral movement and data exfiltration before deploying their custom ransomware payload that uses AES-256 encryption with RSA-2048 key protection. The group has demonstrated particular focus on critical infrastructure sectors, with the FBI and CISA issuing joint advisories in February 2022 highlighting attacks against organizations in government, healthcare, manufacturing, and education sectors, including notable incidents affecting San Francisco's transportation authority and multiple healthcare systems across the United States. BlackByte remains active as of 2024, continuing to evolve their tactics and maintain their leak site for publishing stolen data from victims who refuse to pay ransoms. The group has been linked to 147 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 4, 2021; most recent post July 30, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

July 16, 2025GreenLight Biosciences listed by Blackbyteon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Blackbyte

Blackbyte has been linked to 147 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Blackbyte dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Technology sector, which has 3,549 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, GreenLight Biosciences is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Blackbyte means GreenLight Biosciences 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 Blackbyte'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.