Disclosure context

About Cuba

The Cuba ransomware group is a financially-motivated cybercriminal organization that emerged in February 2021 and has since conducted attacks against at least 105 known victims globally. The group operates as an independent ransomware operation with suspected ties to Russian-speaking cybercriminals, though their exact country of origin remains unconfirmed by law enforcement agencies. Cuba ransomware operators primarily gain initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials, exploitation of Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities, and phishing campaigns, subsequently deploying their custom Cuba ransomware payload which encrypts victim files while exfiltrating sensitive data before encryption as part of their double extortion strategy. The group has particularly targeted organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia, and Belgium, with a notable focus on critical infrastructure sectors including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and energy companies. According to FBI reporting, the Cuba ransomware group has demanded ransom payments ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars from their victims. As of recent threat intelligence assessments, the Cuba ransomware group remains active and continues to pose a significant threat to organizations across multiple sectors and geographic regions. The group has been linked to 105 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on February 3, 2021; most recent post February 1, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: COLDDRAW, Fidel.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 10, 2023mountstmarys listed by Cubaon 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, mountstmarys is reported in Australia, a country with 368 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

← All victims

Mount St Mary's

listed as mountstmarys · Claimed by Cuba · listed 3 years ago

31m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Oct 10, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Cuba
Status: Data leaked
Country: Australia
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Oct 10, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Mount St Mary's is a Catholic educational institution with a heritage spanning over 160 years, originally founded to educate young people in its local area. The school's mission centres on individual student development. Based on the country classification, it operates in Australia.

Industry: K-12 Catholic Education

Attack summary

Severity: high — An educational institution holds significant volumes of minor children's PII, staff personal data, and potentially sensitive welfare or medical records; a confirmed data_published status means exfiltrated data has been released, constituting a serious regulated-data exposure even without an explicit data size figure.

The Cuba ransomware group claims to have published data exfiltrated from Mount St Mary's, with the disclosure status listed as data_published, indicating stolen data has been released or made available.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Staff records
Administrative documents
Financial records

What the group claims

Mount St Mary’s is rightly proud of its extensive heritage dating back over 160 years. The original vision to educate all young people in the local area remains at the core of our work. Our mission is to ensure individual...

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.