Was Regional Transportation Authority hit by ransomware?

Regional Transportation Authority was listed by the Monti 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 Monti ransomware group?

Monti 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 Regional Transportation Authority breach?

Monti published data attributed to Regional Transportation Authority. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Regional Transportation Authority

Claimed by Monti · listed 3 years ago

39m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 8, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Monti
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Government
Listed on leak site: Mar 8, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) is a unit of local government created by the State of Illinois to oversee the financing, planning, and coordination of the Chicago region's public transit system, encompassing CTA, Metra, and Pace. It provides funding, planning support, and policy oversight for transit services across the greater Chicago metropolitan area. The RTA also administers programs for low-income riders, older adults, and persons with disabilities.

Industry: Public Transit Coordination & Government Transportation Authority
Address: 175 W. Jackson Blvd., Suite 1650, Chicago, IL 60604
Employees: 51-200
Founded: 1974

Attack summary

Severity: high — The data_published status confirms exfiltration from a U.S. government transportation authority. Likely exposed data includes financial records, government operations data, potentially PII for transit program participants (low-income riders, disabled riders, older adults), and bond/investor information — constituting significant sensitive government and financial data at scale.

The Monti ransomware group claims an attack on the RTA and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), asserting exfiltration of information from this government transportation authority; no specific ransom amount or data volume was stated in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Government agency records
Transit planning documents
Financial documents
Employee/staff information
Rider program data (Ride Free, Access, ADA Paratransit)
Procurement and contracting records
Investor relations and bond transaction data
Budget and financial reports

What the group claims

A government agency created by the State of Illinois to coordinate the Chicago region’s transit system https://rtachicago.org

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 Monti

Monti is a ransomware group that emerged in December 2022, operating with primarily financial motivations through targeted encryption attacks against organizations across multiple sectors. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain largely undocumented in public threat intelligence reports, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation rather than a established Ransomware-as-a-Service model. Monti's attack methodology and specific technical details regarding initial access vectors, encryption methods, and data exfiltration practices have not been extensively documented in publicly available threat intelligence from major security firms or government agencies. The group has reportedly compromised approximately 110 victims since their emergence, with their targeting primarily focused on organizations in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, and Italy, showing a particular preference for business services, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology sectors. Limited public documentation exists regarding specific notable campaigns or high-profile attacks attributed to Monti, reflecting the group's relatively recent emergence and lower profile compared to more established ransomware operations. As of current reporting, Monti appears to remain an active threat, though comprehensive intelligence on their current operational status is limited in publicly available sources from major cybersecurity organizations and law enforcement agencies. The group has been linked to 110 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 7, 2022; most recent post May 8, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 8, 2023Regional Transportation Authority listed by Montion the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Monti

Monti has been linked to 110 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Monti dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Government sector, which has 685 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Regional Transportation Authority is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Monti means Regional Transportation Authority 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 Monti'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.