Was Paul Smiths College hit by ransomware?

Paul Smiths College was listed by the Avoslocker 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 Avoslocker ransomware group?

Avoslocker 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 Paul Smiths College breach?

Avoslocker published data attributed to Paul Smiths College. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Paul Smiths College

Claimed by Avoslocker · listed 4 years ago

43m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedDec 26, 2022
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Avoslocker
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Dec 26, 2022

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Paul Smith's College is a four-year liberal arts and sciences institution located in the Adirondacks of New York State. It is the only four-year college offering broad-based higher education in that region, with programs focused on hospitality, natural resources, culinary arts, and liberal arts. The college serves a relatively small student body in a rural setting.

Industry: Higher Education
Address: 7833 NY-30, Paul Smiths, NY 12970, United States
Employees: 51-200
Founded: 1937

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been confirmed as published by the ransomware group, indicating successful exfiltration. An educational institution holds student PII, financial aid records, and employee data, constituting significant sensitive data exposure at scale, though not explicitly confirmed as medical or government-classified material.

AvosLocker claims to have attacked Paul Smith's College and has published data, indicating exfiltration of institutional data. The disclosed status of 'data_published' suggests files have been released publicly on the group's leak site.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Employee/faculty records
Financial records
Administrative documents
Personally identifiable information (PII)

What the group claims

At Paul Smith's College, it's about the experience. We are the only four-year institution offering broad-based higher education in the Adirondacks. Our programs...

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 Avoslocker

**Overview**: AvosLocker is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in June 2021, operating as both a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform and conducting direct attacks against organizations worldwide. The group has demonstrated sophisticated capabilities and has targeted over 70 victims across multiple critical sectors. **Origin & Affiliation**: While the exact country of origin remains unclear, AvosLocker operates as a RaaS model, recruiting affiliates to conduct attacks using their ransomware payload and infrastructure. The group has shown no clear ties to state-sponsored activities, appearing to be purely profit-driven cybercriminals. **Attack Methodology**: AvosLocker typically gains initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials, VPN vulnerabilities, and phishing campaigns, subsequently deploying tools like Cobalt Strike for lateral movement and persistence. The group employs double extortion tactics, stealing sensitive data before encrypting systems and threatening to publish the information on their leak site if ransom demands are not met. Their ransomware uses strong encryption algorithms and includes capabilities to terminate security processes and delete shadow copies to prevent recovery. **Notable Campaigns**: The group has particularly targeted critical infrastructure sectors including education, manufacturing, finance, healthcare, and transportation, with significant attacks reported against organizations in the United States, Germany, Singapore, Canada, and France. CISA and FBI have issued joint advisories warning about AvosLocker's targeting of critical infrastructure, highlighting the group's impact on essential services. **Current Status**: As of recent threat intelligence reporting, AvosLocker remains active, continuing to recruit affiliates and conduct ransomware operations against organizations globally. The group has been linked to 70 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on June 13, 2021; most recent post February 11, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: Avos.

Timeline of this disclosure

December 26, 2022Paul Smiths College listed by Avoslockeron the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Avoslocker

Avoslocker has been linked to 70 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Avoslocker 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, Paul Smiths College is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Avoslocker means Paul Smiths College 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 Avoslocker'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.