Was City of Augusta hit by ransomware?

City of Augusta was listed by the Blackbyte 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 Blackbyte ransomware group?

Blackbyte 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 City of Augusta breach?

Blackbyte published data attributed to City of Augusta. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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City of Augusta

Claimed by Blackbyte · listed 3 years ago

38m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 25, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Blackbyte
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Government
Listed on leak site: May 25, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The City of Augusta, Georgia is a consolidated city-county government located on the central-eastern border of Georgia along the Fall Line section of the Savannah River, bordering South Carolina. As a consolidated city-county, it administers both municipal and county-level public services for the Augusta metropolitan area. It is one of the oldest cities in Georgia, established in 1736.

Industry: Municipal & County Government
Address: Augusta, Georgia, United States
Founded: 1736

Attack summary

Severity: high — A confirmed data publication by BlackByte against a consolidated city-county government strongly implies exfiltration of government records, which likely include PII of residents and employees, sensitive administrative data, and potentially law enforcement or infrastructure-related information. The disclosed/published status elevates severity above medium.

BlackByte claims to have attacked the City of Augusta, Georgia, with the disclosure status indicating data has been published; the leak post does not specify whether encryption or exfiltration occurred, but the published-data status implies exfiltration of government data.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Government records
Municipal data

What the group claims

The City of Augusta, GA, headquartered in Augusta, and established in 1736, is a consolidated city-county located on the central-eastern border of the state of Georgia within the Fall Line section. The city lies across the Savannah River from South Carolina

Sources

Victim siteaugustaga.gov/

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 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 25, 2023City of Augusta 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 Government sector, which has 685 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, City of Augusta is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Blackbyte means City of Augusta 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 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.