Disclosure context

About hive

Hive is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in August 2021, operating as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model to maximize their criminal enterprise's reach and profitability. The group is suspected to have origins in Eastern Europe based on their operational patterns and linguistic indicators, though definitive attribution remains unclear, and they operate independently while recruiting affiliates to conduct attacks on their behalf. Hive primarily gains initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials, phishing campaigns, and exploitation of known vulnerabilities in public-facing applications, subsequently deploying their custom ransomware payload that uses a combination of RSA and AES encryption algorithms while simultaneously exfiltrating sensitive data before encryption to enable double extortion tactics where they threaten to publish stolen information if ransom demands are not met. The group has targeted over 208 victims globally with a particular focus on manufacturing companies, business services, information technology firms, healthcare services, and internet and telecommunication services, primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Indonesia, and China, including notable attacks against healthcare systems and critical infrastructure that drew significant attention from law enforcement agencies. In January 2023, the FBI announced the successful disruption of Hive's operations, seizing their dark web leak sites and decryption keys, effectively dismantling the group's infrastructure and providing free decryption tools to victims. The group has been linked to 208 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on August 14, 2021; most recent post January 16, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

December 20, 2022Innovative Education Management listed by hiveon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 694 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Innovative Education Management 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.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Innovative Education Management

Claimed by hive · listed 3 years ago

41m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Dec 20, 2022
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: hive
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Dec 20, 2022

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Innovative Education Management (IEM) is a California-based organization that develops and operates charter schools. It has been active since 1998 and focuses on public charter school management within the state of California. The scale of operations beyond charter school development is not publicly detailed in the available information.

Industry: Charter School Management & Operations
Address: California, United States
Founded: 1998

Attack summary

Severity: high — The disclosed status is 'data_published,' meaning exfiltration and public release has occurred. An education management organization handling California charter schools almost certainly possesses regulated student PII (FERPA-protected data), employee records, and administrative financial data, elevating severity to high.

The Hive ransomware group claims a successful attack against Innovative Education Management, with the disclosure status indicating data has been published. The post does not specify whether encryption, exfiltration, or both occurred, nor does it detail the volume of data involved.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Charter school operational records
Student records (likely)
Staff/employee data (likely)
Administrative documents

What the group claims

Innovative Education Management (IEM) has been successfully developing and operating California charter schools since 1998

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.