Was Guardian Fine Art Services hit by ransomware?

Guardian Fine Art Services was listed by the Nokoyawa 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 Nokoyawa ransomware group?

Nokoyawa 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 Guardian Fine Art Services breach?

Nokoyawa published data attributed to Guardian Fine Art Services. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Guardian Fine Art Services

Claimed by Nokoyawa · listed 3 years ago

38m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 23, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Nokoyawa
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Business Services
Listed on leak site: May 23, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Guardian Fine Art Services is a full-service fine art storage and logistics company based in Milwaukee, WI, serving the upper Midwest from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Cleveland and regularly shuttling art to major centers such as New York City. The company provides secure climate-controlled storage, fine art transportation, custom crating and packing, installation, collections management, and rigging for high-value assets including fine art, jewelry, musical instruments, furniture, antiques, and firearms. Guardian is a CHUBB Insurance approved/preferred service provider.

Industry: Fine Art Storage & Logistics Services
Address: 1635 W. St. Paul Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53233

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published (not merely listed), and the company manages records of high-value private assets including jewelry, firearms, and fine art for clients, creating significant risk of PII exposure and enabling targeted theft or fraud against high-net-worth individuals.

Nokoyawa claims to have attacked Guardian Fine Art Services and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), suggesting exfiltration of company and client data related to the storage and management of high-value tangible assets including fine art, jewelry, firearms, and antiques.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Client records
Asset inventory and collections management data
Condition reports and catalogs
Financial and billing records
Contact and personal information of clients
Insurance-related documentation
Business operational data

What the group claims

GUARDIAN is the premier fine art storage facility in the Chicago-Milwaukee metropolitan region dedicated to the care and storage of fine and decorative art, jewelry, musical instruments, furniture and antiques, firearms, and other tangible assets. GUARDIAN offers a range of wrap-around services...

Sources

Victim siteguardianfineart.com
Leak posthttp://nokoleakb76znymx443veg4n6fytx6spck6pc7nkr4dvfuygpub6jsid.onion/leak/6432f4e7f42d1510e280e3e9

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 Nokoyawa

Nokoyawa is a ransomware group that emerged in December 2022, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors including healthcare, non-profit, education, finance, and energy. The group has claimed at least 36 victims since its emergence, with attacks predominantly focused on the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and the Philippines. While detailed technical analysis of Nokoyawa's operations remains limited in public reporting, the group appears to follow conventional ransomware tactics targeting critical infrastructure and essential services sectors. Their targeting of healthcare and educational institutions suggests they operate without the sector restrictions that some other ransomware groups have adopted. Notable campaigns include attacks across their preferred geographic regions, though specific high-profile incidents have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reporting from major security firms. As of current reporting, Nokoyawa appears to remain an active threat, though the group's relatively recent emergence means long-term operational patterns and potential law enforcement disruption efforts are still developing. The group has been linked to 36 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 9, 2022; most recent post August 4, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 23, 2023Guardian Fine Art Services listed by Nokoyawaon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Nokoyawa

Nokoyawa has been linked to 36 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Nokoyawa dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Business Services sector, which has 3,796 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Guardian Fine Art Services is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Nokoyawa means Guardian Fine Art Services 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 Nokoyawa'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.