GandCrab was a prolific ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that emerged in January 2018 and became one of the most widespread ransomware families before its operators announced retirement in May 2019, claiming to have earned over $2 billion in ransom payments. The group operated primarily for financial gain, recruiting affiliates through underground forums to distribute their ransomware in exchange for a percentage of ransom payments. GandCrab was believed to be operated by Russian-speaking cybercriminals, with the group explicitly avoiding targeting systems in Russia and former Soviet states, and operated as a sophisticated RaaS model providing affiliates with customized ransomware builds, payment portals, and technical support. The ransomware typically gained initial access through exploit kits, phishing campaigns, and remote desktop protocol attacks, employed strong encryption algorithms, and evolved to include data exfiltration capabilities in later versions, threatening to publish stolen data if ransom demands were not met. During its active period, GandCrab infected hundreds of thousands of systems worldwide across multiple sectors including healthcare, government, and education, with notable campaigns targeting managed service providers to achieve widespread lateral movement, though the group faced multiple law enforcement disruptions including a collaboration between Romanian police, Europol, and security researchers that resulted in the release of decryption tools for earlier variants. The GandCrab operators officially announced their retirement in May 2019, claiming financial success, though security researchers have identified potential connections between former GandCrab affiliates and subsequent ransomware operations including REvil/Sodinokibi. The group has been linked to 1 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2018. The operation is currently inactive.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education Facilities sector, which has 27 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Monroe County School District is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.
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.
