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City of Ballwin

Claimed by Royal · listed 3 years ago

39m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedApr 18, 2023
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Royal
Status
Data leaked
Country
United States
Sector
Government
Listed on leak site
Apr 18, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The City of Ballwin is a municipal government serving Ballwin, Missouri, located in West St. Louis County. It operates departments including Police, Municipal Court, Public Works, Parks and Recreation, Finance, and Human Resources. The city provides resident services such as utilities, trash collection, permits, and recreational programming.

Industry
Municipal Government
Address
1 Government Center, Ballwin, Missouri 63011
Employees
51-200

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a municipal government entity with data_published status, meaning regulated and sensitive data — including court records, police data, resident PII, and financial/HR records — has been confirmed exfiltrated and published, affecting potentially thousands of residents.

The Royal ransomware group claims an attack against the City of Ballwin with a disclosed status of data_published, indicating data was exfiltrated and subsequently published. No specific ransom demand or data volume was stated in the available post.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Municipal government records
  • Resident personal information
  • Police department data
  • Municipal court records
  • Finance and HR records
  • Permits and licenses data
  • Employee information

Sources

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.

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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

  • April 18, 2023City of Ballwin listed by Royalon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Royal

Royal has been linked to 211 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Royal dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Government sector, which has 685 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, City of Ballwin is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Royal means City of Ballwin 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 Royal'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.