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Waterford Retirement Residence

Claimed by Ciphbit · listed 3 years ago

34m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedSep 14, 2023
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Ciphbit
Status
Data leaked
Country
Canada
Sector
Healthcare
Listed on leak site
Sep 14, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Waterford Retirement Residence is a family-owned seniors' care residence located in Ottawa South, Ontario, Canada, operated by the Zlepnig family. Founded in 1996 as part of the Zlepnig family's transition from the Southway Hotel brand, Waterford offers a full continuum of care for seniors including Alzheimer's and dementia care. The Ottawa location is noted as the only seniors' residence in North America with a fully enclosed, climate-controlled atrium with a retractable roof.

Industry
Senior Care & Retirement Residences
Address
Ottawa South, Ontario, Canada
Founded
1996

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a senior care and retirement residence in the healthcare sector, making it highly likely that exfiltrated data includes regulated personal health information (PHI) and PII of elderly and vulnerable residents, including those with Alzheimer's disease — constituting a critical breach of sensitive medical and personal data.

The Ciphbit ransomware group claims to have attacked Waterford Retirement Residence and has published data exfiltrated from the organization. No ransom amount or specific data size was disclosed in the post.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Resident personal information
  • Medical/care records
  • Staff records
  • Financial records
  • Operational documents

What the group claims

OUR FAMILY CARING FOR YOURS, SINCE 1958. For over 60 years the Zlepnig family has served the greater Ottawa community dating back to the humble beginnings of the Southway Motel in 1958 when first generation Canadians, Peter and Theresia Zlepnig built a modest 7 unit motel. As Ottawa grew so did the Zlepnig family business. Bill (son) and Louisa Zlepnig guided the property through a series of expansions that culminated in a full service Hotel with 170 guest rooms, Shallows Restaurant, meeting rooms & banquet facilities. Enter the third generation. Bill & Louisa have now passed down the Southway legacy to their sons, Fred & Stephen and their respective wives, Karen & Leslie. Together, they are transforming the Southway into their Waterford brand of seniors' residences. Since 1996 they have been creating and developing innovative and industry leading residences. Inspired by the loss of Karen's mother to Alzheimer's disease the Waterford brand has evolved into a full continuum of care residence ensuring that a broad range of care needs can be met. To this end, the Waterford Ottawa is the only seniors residence in North America with a fully enclosed, climate-controlled atrium and a retractable roof. This remarkable and innovative courtyard is designed as comfortable outdoor living space that will be enjoyed year round inside.

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 Ciphbit

Ciphbit is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in September 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and demonstrating a focused targeting approach across Western nations. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain largely undocumented by major threat intelligence organizations, though their operational patterns suggest they operate as an independent entity rather than a established ransomware-as-a-service model. With limited public documentation from authoritative sources like CISA, FBI, or major security research firms, specific details regarding their attack methodology, initial access vectors, and encryption techniques have not been comprehensively analyzed or reported in open-source intelligence. The group has claimed responsibility for attacks against 36 documented victims, primarily concentrating their operations in the United States, Italy, France, Germany, and Portugal, with a notable preference for targeting business services, manufacturing, healthcare, and construction sectors. No major high-profile campaigns or significant law enforcement actions against Ciphbit have been publicly documented by authoritative sources as of current reporting. Based on available intelligence, Ciphbit appears to remain active as of late 2023, though their relatively recent emergence and limited public documentation make definitive status assessments challenging without additional confirmed reporting from established threat intelligence sources. The group has been linked to 36 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 14, 2023; most recent post February 10, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • September 14, 2023Waterford Retirement Residence listed by Ciphbiton the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Ciphbit

Ciphbit has been linked to 36 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Ciphbit dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Healthcare sector, which has 2,600 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Waterford Retirement Residence is reported in Canada, a country with 1,055 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Ciphbit means Waterford Retirement Residence 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, CCCS (Canada), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on Ciphbit'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.