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Weizmann Institute of Science

listed as Weizmann New Leak · Claimed by Handala · listed 1 year ago

13m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedJun 27, 2025
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Handala
Status
Data leaked
Country
Israel
Listed on leak site
Jun 27, 2025

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The Weizmann Institute of Science is a major Israeli public research institution conducting fundamental and applied research across mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science. Based in Rehovot, it employs thousands of scientists and produces significant academic output and intellectual property.

Industry
Scientific Research & Development
Address
Rehovot, Israel
Employees
3000-4000
Founded
1934

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Alleged exfiltration of sensitive scientific research, unpublished manuscripts, and proprietary models from a major research institution. Data affects national scientific assets and researchers' intellectual property. Operational disruption to critical research infrastructure claimed.

The Handala group claims to have encrypted Weizmann's data center infrastructure, destroyed backups, and exfiltrated research data including unpublished manuscripts and research models. The group claims comprehensive data retention.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • unpublished research manuscripts
  • research models and datasets
  • institutional data center contents
  • cloud-stored materials

What the group claims

Dear Weizmann, Boom. That’s the sound your data center made. We hear the servers didn’t make it. The backups? Vaporized. The cloud? Rained fire. Your brilliant decades of research? Gone. Well , not entirely. We saved it for you. Every byte. Every model. Every unpublished manuscript. While your walls burned, our vaults stayed cold and…

Sources

Source

Indexed 1 year 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 Handala

Handala is a recently emerged ransomware group that first appeared in May 2024, primarily motivated by financial gain with potential geopolitical overtones given their targeting patterns. The group's country of origin remains unclear, though their focus on Israeli targets alongside Western nations suggests possible Middle Eastern connections or sympathies, and it is unknown whether they operate as a standalone group or utilize a Ransomware-as-a-Service model. Limited public information exists regarding their specific attack methodologies, initial access vectors, or technical capabilities, though their rapid accumulation of 164 documented victims suggests they employ effective compromise techniques across multiple sectors including technology, government, energy, and healthcare organizations. The group has demonstrated a clear preference for targeting victims in Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom, with additional activity observed in Iran and the UAE, indicating either opportunistic targeting or strategic selection based on geopolitical considerations. Given their recent emergence and continued victim acquisitions throughout 2024, Handala appears to remain active, though comprehensive technical analysis and law enforcement reporting on their operations remain limited due to their relatively short operational history. The group has been linked to 182 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on May 26, 2024; most recent post April 15, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • June 27, 2025Weizmann New Leak listed by Handalaon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Handala

Handala has been linked to 182 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Handala dossier →

Sector and geography

Geographically, Weizmann New Leak is reported in Israel, a country with 156 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Handala means Weizmann New Leak 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, CERT-IL (Israel), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on Handala'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.