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Department of Defence South African

Claimed by Snatch · listed 3 years ago

35m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedAug 21, 2023
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Snatch
Status
Data leaked
Country
South Africa
Sector
Government
Listed on leak site
Aug 21, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The Department of Defence of South Africa (DoD) is the national government department responsible for the defence and protection of South Africa. It encompasses the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and administers military operations, personnel, and assets. The department operates under the Ministry of Defence and Military Veterans.

Industry
National Defence & Military Affairs
Address
Armscor Building, 370 Nossob Street, Erasmuskloof, Pretoria, 0181, South Africa

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a national defence/military government department. Any confirmed data exfiltration from a DoD entity constitutes a critical severity incident due to the potential exposure of classified or sensitive national security information, military personnel PII, and operational data.

The Snatch ransomware group claims to have attacked the South African Department of Defence and has published data ('data_published' status), suggesting exfiltration of government/military files. No ransom amount or specific data volume was stated in the post.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Government documents
  • Military personnel records
  • Internal communications
  • Operational files

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 Snatch

Snatch is a ransomware group that emerged in November 2021, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors including business services, government, education, manufacturing, and healthcare. The group has compromised at least 142 known victims, with their attacks concentrated primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and France. Little is publicly documented about Snatch's specific country of origin or affiliations with other cybercriminal organizations, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation. The group's attack methodology and specific technical details regarding initial access vectors, encryption methods, and data exfiltration practices have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports from major security firms or government agencies. While Snatch has maintained a notable victim count across diverse geographic regions and industry sectors, there are no widely reported major campaigns or high-profile attacks that have drawn significant public attention or law enforcement action. Based on available public information, Snatch appears to remain an active ransomware operation as of recent reporting periods, though comprehensive details about their current operational status and recent activities are limited in open-source intelligence. The group has been linked to 142 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 29, 2021; most recent post May 16, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • August 21, 2023Department of Defence South African listed by Snatchon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Snatch

Snatch has been linked to 142 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Snatch 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, Department of Defence South African is reported in South Africa, a country with 52 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Snatch means Department of Defence South African 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, ECS-CSIRT (South Africa), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on Snatch'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.