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

May 3, 2023ZBW News listed by Royalon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Media sector, which has 37 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, ZBW News is reported in Ukraine.

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.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

listed as ZBW News · Claimed by Royal · listed 3 years ago

37m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
May 3, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Royal
Status: Data leaked
Country: Ukraine
Sector: Media
Listed on leak site: May 3, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (zbw.eu) is the world's largest library for economics and business studies, operating locations in Kiel and Hamburg, Germany. It provides access to over 12 million economics publications via its EconBiz portal and hosts EconStor, an open-access disciplinary repository containing more than 187,000 articles and working papers. ZBW also conducts research in Open Science, Web Science, and Artificial Intelligence, serving as a knowledge-transfer hub between economic research and society.

Industry: Academic & Research Library (Economics)
Address: Düsternbrooker Weg 120, 24105 Kiel, Germany; Neuer Jungfernstieg 21, 20354 Hamburg, Germany

Attack summary

Severity: high — The group claims confirmed exfiltration of PII (employees and customers), contractual documents, and NDAs from a publicly-funded research institution; the presence of geopolitically sensitive materials (Ukraine conflict analysis) and personal data of potentially many academic/research stakeholders elevates severity, though no proof files have yet been published and scale is unquantified.

The Royal ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated data from ZBW, including personal information of employees and customers, contracts, NDAs, and materials related to Ukraine conflict predictions and reviews, with publication of the data stated as forthcoming.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Employee personal information
Customer personal information
Contracts
NDAs
Ukraine conflict predictions and reviews

What the group claims

ZBW's disciplinary repository EconStor provides a large collection of more than 187,000 articles and working papers in Open Access. We are more than sure you understand what this organization had in open access. Personal information of their employees and customers, contracts, NDAs and even Ukraine conflict predictions and reviews.You can find here soon.

Sources

Victim sitezbw.eu
Leak posthttp://royal4ezp7xrbakkus3oofjw6gszrohpodmdnfbe5e4w3og5sm7vb3qd.onion/SRdGu6hpPTP976c14sRVqt7PYdKvAIaR

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.