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University of Sydney Union

listed as usu.org.au · Claimed by Blackbyte · listed 4 years ago

50m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedMay 12, 2022
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Blackbyte
Status
Data leaked
Country
Australia
Sector
Education
Listed on leak site
May 12, 2022

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The University of Sydney Union (USU) is the student union affiliated with the University of Sydney, Australia. It operates a range of services, venues, clubs, and events for students and staff on campus. As one of the oldest and largest student unions in Australia, it manages food outlets, bars, cultural events, and student club support across the university.

Industry
University Student Services & Union
Address
Manning Road, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Employees
51-200
Founded
1874

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data is confirmed published by the ransomware group against a student union handling PII of potentially thousands of students and staff; published data status elevates this beyond medium even without full detail of what was exfiltrated.

BlackByte claims to have attacked usu.org.au and has published data as indicated by the 'data_published' disclosure status; specific claims about encryption or exfiltration volume are not available from the captured leak post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Student records
  • Staff personal information
  • Financial data
  • Membership data
  • Internal business documents

Sources

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 Blackbyte

BlackByte is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that emerged in October 2021, primarily motivated by financial gain through double extortion tactics targeting organizations across multiple sectors. The group is suspected to operate from Russia or former Soviet states based on their use of Russian-language forums and avoidance of targeting organizations in Commonwealth of Independent States countries, though they maintain no confirmed links to other established ransomware families. BlackByte operators typically gain initial access through vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers, phishing campaigns, and exploitation of remote desktop protocol (RDP) services, employing tools such as Cobalt Strike for lateral movement and data exfiltration before deploying their custom ransomware payload that uses AES-256 encryption with RSA-2048 key protection. The group has demonstrated particular focus on critical infrastructure sectors, with the FBI and CISA issuing joint advisories in February 2022 highlighting attacks against organizations in government, healthcare, manufacturing, and education sectors, including notable incidents affecting San Francisco's transportation authority and multiple healthcare systems across the United States. BlackByte remains active as of 2024, continuing to evolve their tactics and maintain their leak site for publishing stolen data from victims who refuse to pay ransoms. The group has been linked to 147 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 4, 2021; most recent post July 30, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • May 12, 2022usu.org.au listed by Blackbyteon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Blackbyte

Blackbyte has been linked to 147 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Blackbyte 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, usu.org.au is reported in Australia, a country with 455 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Blackbyte means usu.org.au 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, ACSC (Australia), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on Blackbyte'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.