Madliberator is a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in July 2024, operating with apparent financial motivations and demonstrating a focused targeting approach across multiple continents. Based on their targeting pattern spanning Spain, Italy, Germany, South Korea, and South Africa, the group appears to operate internationally with no clear geographic origin established by security researchers, and their operational model as either independent operators or ransomware-as-a-service remains undetermined due to limited public documentation. With only 16 documented victims since their emergence, specific details about their attack methodology, initial access vectors, encryption techniques, and whether they employ double or triple extortion tactics have not been extensively documented by major security firms or government agencies. The group has primarily targeted business services, manufacturing, financial services, and government sectors, though no specific high-profile incidents or record ransom demands have been publicly reported by CISA, FBI, or established threat intelligence providers. As of current reporting, Madliberator appears to remain active given their recent emergence and ongoing targeting activities, though comprehensive analysis remains limited due to the group's relatively small victim count and recent operational timeline. The group has been linked to 16 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on July 17, 2024; most recent post October 3, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.
Also tracked as: mad liberator.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Business Services sector, which has 2,640 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, vrd.be is reported in Belgium, a country with 32 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.
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.
