Was carinya hit by ransomware?

carinya was listed by the Royal ransomware operation (Australia), 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 Royal ransomware group?

Royal 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 carinya breach?

Royal published data attributed to carinya. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Carinya Christian School

listed as carinya · Claimed by Royal · listed 3 years ago

42m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJan 17, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Royal
Status: Data leaked
Country: Australia
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Jan 17, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Carinya Christian School is a Christ-centred independent Christian school operating campuses in Tamworth and Gunnedah, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in May 1984 by the Tamworth Christian Education Association (renamed Carinya Christian Education Ltd in 2022), it operates as a ministry of Trinity Church. The school offers education from Preparatory through Year 12 at Tamworth and through Year 10 at Gunnedah.

Industry: K-12 Christian Education
Address: Tamworth, NSW, Australia
Founded: 1984

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published by the group (not merely listed), involving a school environment where student PII and potentially minor children's records are at risk, constituting sensitive regulated data under Australian privacy law.

The Royal ransomware group claims to have attacked Carinya Christian School and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), indicating exfiltration of school 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
Staff records
Parent/guardian information
School administrative documents
Enrolment data
Financial records

What the group claims

Carinya Christian School Tamworth commenced in May 1984, with six students in Kindergarten to Year Three. It was started by concerned Christian parents The school was founded by the Tamworth Christian Education Association, renamed to Carinya Christian Education Ltd in 2022, as an initiative of Trinity Church. The school is one of the church's ministries, in partnership with parents and other school supporters.

Sources

Victim sitecarinya.nsw.edu.au

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.

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 Royal

Royal is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in November 2022, quickly establishing itself as a significant threat with over 200 documented victims across multiple sectors. The group is believed to operate independently rather than as a ransomware-as-a-service model, though their exact country of origin remains unclear based on publicly available intelligence. Royal primarily gains initial access through phishing campaigns and exploitation of remote desktop protocols, subsequently deploying custom ransomware that encrypts victim files while exfiltrating sensitive data for double extortion tactics. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting critical infrastructure and public services, with notable attacks against educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and government entities primarily in the United States, though they have also significantly impacted organizations across Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France. Their encryption methodology involves custom-built malware that systematically encrypts files while maintaining persistence on compromised networks. As of recent reporting from federal agencies including CISA and FBI advisories, Royal remains an active threat with ongoing campaigns targeting organizations across their preferred sectors, particularly focusing on entities with limited cybersecurity resources that may be more likely to pay ransom demands. The group has been linked to 211 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 4, 2022; most recent post July 19, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

January 17, 2023carinya listed by Royalon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Royal

Royal has been linked to 211 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Royal dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,082 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, carinya is reported in Australia, a country with 455 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Royal means carinya 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, ACSC (Australia), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Royal'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.