Was Gaston College hit by ransomware?

Gaston College was listed by the Snatch 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 Snatch ransomware group?

Snatch 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 Gaston College breach?

Snatch published data attributed to Gaston College. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Gaston College

Claimed by Snatch · listed 3 years ago

40m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedApr 2, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Snatch
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Apr 2, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Gaston College is a public community college located in Dallas, North Carolina, part of the NC Community College System. It operates multiple campuses including the main Dallas/Kimbrell Campus and a Lincoln Campus, offering associate degree programs, continuing education, workforce development, and university transfer pathways. The college has grown from two buildings in 1964 to a multi-campus institution serving the Gaston County region.

Industry: Community College Education
Address: 201 Highway 321 South, Dallas, NC 28034
Employees: 201-500
Founded: 1964

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published by the group against an educational institution that holds regulated student PII (FERPA-protected records), financial aid data, and employee information. Confirmed data publication elevates severity to high, with potential for critical if student PII is confirmed at scale.

The Snatch ransomware group claims an attack on Gaston College and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), asserting exfiltration of institutional data; no ransom amount or specific data volume was stated in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Employee directory data
Financial aid information
Institutional administrative documents
Academic records

What the group claims

Beginning with just two buildings in 1964, by the end of the 1970s a total of 10 buildings graced the Dallas, or main, Campus. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, 11 more buildings were added. It was during the mid-1990s that the College’s Lincoln Campus was

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 Snatch

Snatch is a ransomware group that emerged in November 2021, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors including business services, government, education, manufacturing, and healthcare. The group has compromised at least 142 known victims, with their attacks concentrated primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and France. Little is publicly documented about Snatch's specific country of origin or affiliations with other cybercriminal organizations, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation. The group's attack methodology and specific technical details regarding initial access vectors, encryption methods, and data exfiltration practices have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports from major security firms or government agencies. While Snatch has maintained a notable victim count across diverse geographic regions and industry sectors, there are no widely reported major campaigns or high-profile attacks that have drawn significant public attention or law enforcement action. Based on available public information, Snatch appears to remain an active ransomware operation as of recent reporting periods, though comprehensive details about their current operational status and recent activities are limited in open-source intelligence. The group has been linked to 142 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 29, 2021; most recent post May 16, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

April 2, 2023Gaston College listed by Snatchon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Snatch

Snatch has been linked to 142 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Snatch dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,085 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Gaston College is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Snatch means Gaston College 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 Snatch'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.