Was Pitman Family Farms hit by ransomware?

Pitman Family Farms was listed by the Blackbyte ransomware operation (United States), 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 Blackbyte ransomware group?

Blackbyte 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 Pitman Family Farms breach?

Blackbyte published data attributed to Pitman Family Farms. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Pitman Family Farms

Claimed by Blackbyte · listed 4 years ago

45m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedOct 20, 2022
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Blackbyte
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Food & Agriculture
Listed on leak site: Oct 20, 2022

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Pitman Family Farms, operating under the Mary's Free Range Chickens brand, is a family-owned poultry producer and distributor based in California (phone prefix 559, Central Valley area). In operation since 1954, the company is now led by third-generation farmers David and Ben Pitman and distributes premium free-range poultry products at both local and national levels.

Industry: Poultry Production & Distribution
Founded: 1954

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been confirmed as published by the ransomware group, indicating successful exfiltration and public disclosure of company data. While the exact nature and volume of data is not specified, the 'data_published' status represents a confirmed exfiltration event at a food-sector company, elevating severity beyond medium.

BlackByte claims to have compromised Pitman Family Farms and has published data from the attack. The disclosed status indicates data has been published, though no specific data volume or ransom amount was stated in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Company operational data
Employee records (inferred from New Hire/Employee Login portal)

What the group claims

Mary’s Free Range Chickens is proud to be family owned and operated since 1954. Mary's sons, David and Ben Pitman, are third-generation Pitman farmers who lead the company today. David and Ben have been taught by their father, Rick, who learned from his father, Don, about the importance of animal husbandry and our responsibility to ensure the welfare of animals

Sources

Victim sitepitmanfarms.com

Source

Indexed 4 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 Blackbyte

BlackByte is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that emerged in October 2021, primarily motivated by financial gain through double extortion tactics targeting organizations across multiple sectors. The group is suspected to operate from Russia or former Soviet states based on their use of Russian-language forums and avoidance of targeting organizations in Commonwealth of Independent States countries, though they maintain no confirmed links to other established ransomware families. BlackByte operators typically gain initial access through vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers, phishing campaigns, and exploitation of remote desktop protocol (RDP) services, employing tools such as Cobalt Strike for lateral movement and data exfiltration before deploying their custom ransomware payload that uses AES-256 encryption with RSA-2048 key protection. The group has demonstrated particular focus on critical infrastructure sectors, with the FBI and CISA issuing joint advisories in February 2022 highlighting attacks against organizations in government, healthcare, manufacturing, and education sectors, including notable incidents affecting San Francisco's transportation authority and multiple healthcare systems across the United States. BlackByte remains active as of 2024, continuing to evolve their tactics and maintain their leak site for publishing stolen data from victims who refuse to pay ransoms. The group has been linked to 147 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 4, 2021; most recent post July 30, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 20, 2022Pitman Family Farms listed by Blackbyteon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Blackbyte

Blackbyte has been linked to 147 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Blackbyte dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Food & Agriculture sector, which has 187 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Pitman Family Farms is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Blackbyte means Pitman Family Farms 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, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Blackbyte'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.