Was De Gruyter Brill hit by ransomware?

De Gruyter Brill was listed by the Play ransomware operation (Netherlands), 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 Play ransomware group?

Play 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 De Gruyter Brill breach?

Play published data attributed to De Gruyter Brill. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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De Gruyter Brill

Claimed by Play · listed 4 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedFeb 7, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Play
Status: Data leaked
Country: Netherlands
Listed on leak site: Feb 7, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

De Gruyter Brill is an international academic and scholarly publisher formed from the merger of De Gruyter and Brill, headquartered in the Netherlands with offices worldwide. The company publishes books, journals, and online resources across 29 subject areas including humanities, social sciences, law, medicine, and natural sciences, with over 341 years of combined publishing history. It serves authors, librarians, and researchers globally, offering both subscription-based and open access publishing models with a catalogue of 5,000+ open access books.

Industry: Academic & Scholarly Publishing
Employees: 1001-5000
Founded: 1749

Attack summary

Severity: high — De Gruyter Brill is a major academic publisher handling large volumes of author PII, institutional contracts, financial records, and potentially sensitive research data. The 'data_published' status indicates exfiltration and public release of business data at scale, consistent with a high-severity classification even absent a stated data size.

The Play ransomware group claims to have attacked De Gruyter Brill and has disclosed the data as published, though no specific data size, ransom demand, or detailed description of exfiltrated content is provided in the leak post. The disclosure status of 'data_published' indicates the group asserts data has been released publicly.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Author and manuscript data
Librarian and institutional client records
Employee records
Financial and accounting data
Publishing contracts and rights information
Internal business communications

What the group claims

United States

The leak post

captured from the group's site

| Play ransomware HAS NEVER PROVIDED AND DOES NOT PROVIDE THE RaaS, read the FAQ page.WE NEVER WRITES FIRST, IF SOMEONE WRITES TO YOU, THEY ARE SCAMMERS.we'll buy your access: 75tkvxemb6zpyk3fbl3mwm32jklc2sdjacb3kazrioamopbfn2w2z5qd.onionIf we have not responded to you by email within 12 hours, please leave your contact information on the website in the contact tab. |  
| --- |  
| EMA Engineering & Consulting👁️ views: 321added: 2026-05-07publication date: 2026-05-11   | Accessoires Outillage Ltee👁️ views: 280added: 2026-05-07publication date: 2026-05-11   | K & E Distributing👁️ views: 282added: 2026-05-07publication date: 2026-05-11   |  
| Sokolin👁️ views: 7261   | Barnes Solicitors LLP👁️ views: 7182   | Witt UK Group👁️ views: 8181   |  
| Valley Plating Inc👁️ views: 8198   | Dock Pros👁️ views: 8179   | Kivells👁️ views: 8149   |  
| Specflue👁️ views: 8136   | Weber Kracht & Chellew👁️ views: 8180   | Lucky Look👁️ views: 8285   |

Sources

Victim sitewww.degruyterbrill.com
Leak posthttp://k7kg3jqxang3wh7hnmaiokchk7qoebupfgoik6rha6mjpzwupwtj25yd.onion/topic.php?id=mdFr5QAlE1NKl

Source

Indexed 4 months 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 Play

**Overview:** Play (also known as PlayCrypt) is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in late 2022, conducting targeted attacks against organizations across multiple sectors with a focus on financial extortion. **Origin & Affiliation:** The group's country of origin remains unclear based on public reporting, though they appear to operate independently rather than as a traditional ransomware-as-a-service model. **Attack Methodology:** Play ransomware operators typically gain initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials and exploit valid accounts, then move laterally through networks using tools like Cobalt Strike before deploying their custom ransomware payload. The group employs double extortion tactics, stealing sensitive data before encryption and threatening to publish it on their leak site if ransom demands are not met. **Notable Campaigns:** According to CISA advisories, Play has targeted over 300 entities globally since its emergence, with significant impacts on critical infrastructure sectors including healthcare, education, and government services, though specific ransom amounts and individual victim details vary in public reporting. **Current Status:** Play remains an active threat as of 2024, continuing to target organizations primarily in North America and Europe according to ongoing security researcher observations and law enforcement warnings. The group has been linked to 1,304 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 26, 2022; most recent post June 11, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: PlayCrypt.

Timeline of this disclosure

February 7, 2026De Gruyter Brill listed by Playon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Play

Play has been linked to 1,304 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Play dossier →

Sector and geography

Geographically, De Gruyter Brill is reported in Netherlands, a country with 54 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Play means De Gruyter Brill 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.
Monitor for the data appearing on Play'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.