Was Winona County hit by ransomware?

Winona County was listed by the Interlock 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 Interlock ransomware group?

Interlock 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 Winona County breach?

Interlock published data attributed to Winona County. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Winona County

Claimed by Interlock · listed 3 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 1, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Interlock
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Public Sector
Listed on leak site: May 1, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Winona County is a county government entity located in the Mississippi River blufflands of southeastern Minnesota. It provides a range of public services including property tax administration, law enforcement (Sheriff's Office), licensing, permitting, and recycling services. The county operates the official site winonacounty.gov and serves residents of Winona County, MN.

Industry: County Government / Public Sector Administration
Address: 202 West Third Street, Winona, MN 55987

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The breach involves a government entity with confirmed exfiltration and publication of PII at scale (resident records), law enforcement records (police records), and financial/tax documents — all categories of regulated or sensitive public-sector data. The county itself has publicly acknowledged the ransomware incident, corroborating the claim.

The Interlock ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated a large database of confidential data from Winona County, including resident records, tax and budget documents, and police records, and has published the data following what it characterizes as the county's negligent security posture. The county's own website confirms a ransomware incident via a press release dated January 23, 2026.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Resident records
Tax documents
Budget documents
Police records
Data from other county institutions

What the group claims

Winona County is located in the Mississippi River blufflands of southeastern Minnesota. They have been negligent regarding security and the data they store, which has resulted in a breach and the public disclosure of all the confidential data they held. As a result, we are now able to offer you a large database containing resident records, tax and budget documents, police records, and data from other institutions.

Sources

Victim sitewinonacounty.gov
Leak posthttp://3cpc3v57l7rstjtaelxgnlrzsolz7pd6ltsygjo2tjuonxteyaba2pid.onion/index.php?p=

Source

Indexed 3 months 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 Interlock

Interlock is a recently emerged ransomware group that began operations in October 2024, primarily motivated by financial gain through extortion activities targeting organizations across multiple sectors. The group's country of origin and potential affiliations remain unclear given their recent emergence, with insufficient public documentation to determine whether they operate as an independent entity or under a Ransomware-as-a-Service model. Limited public information exists regarding their specific attack methodologies, initial access vectors, or encryption techniques, as major cybersecurity firms and law enforcement agencies have not yet published comprehensive technical analyses of their operations. Since beginning operations, Interlock has reportedly compromised approximately 100 victims, with their targeting primarily focused on organizations in English-speaking countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia, as well as Italy, while demonstrating a preference for attacking education, manufacturing, healthcare, and public sector entities. The group remains active as of late 2024, though comprehensive threat intelligence profiles from established security research organizations have not yet been published due to the group's recent emergence in the threat landscape. The group has been linked to 114 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 13, 2024; most recent post July 10, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 1, 2026Winona County listed by Interlockon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Interlock

Interlock has been linked to 114 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Interlock dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Public Sector sector, which has 466 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Winona County is reported in United States, a country with 3,115 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Interlock means Winona County 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 Interlock'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.