Hiveleak is a financially-motivated ransomware group that emerged in August 2021, conducting targeted attacks primarily against organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Spain, and Germany with a focus on manufacturing, business services, information technology, healthcare, and education sectors. Limited public documentation exists regarding this group's specific country of origin or affiliations with other ransomware operations, though their targeting patterns and operational timeline suggest they operate as part of the broader ransomware ecosystem that proliferated during the 2021-2022 period. The group's attack methodology and technical capabilities remain largely undocumented in major threat intelligence reports from CISA, FBI, or leading security research firms, though their victim count of 208 organizations indicates sustained operational capability over their known active period. Notable campaigns and high-profile victims have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reporting, suggesting the group may have maintained a lower profile compared to major ransomware operations like Conti or LockBit during the same timeframe. The current operational status of Hiveleak remains unclear based on available public intelligence reporting. The group has been linked to 208 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on August 14, 2021; most recent post January 16, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations sector, which has 7 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Doner is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.
If your organisation is affected
A listing by Hiveleak means Doner 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 Hiveleak'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.
