Disclosure context

About Vicesociety

Vicesociety is a ransomware group that emerged in May 2021, primarily motivated by financial gain through targeting critical infrastructure and public service organizations. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain largely undetermined by public threat intelligence reporting, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation rather than a established RaaS model. Vicesociety primarily gains initial access through exploitation of public-facing applications and credential-based attacks, with documented cases showing they particularly focus on compromising remote access services and vulnerable web applications before deploying their ransomware payload across victim networks. The group has demonstrated a clear preference for targeting educational institutions, government agencies, and healthcare organizations, with their 188 documented victims concentrated heavily in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Spain, indicating a focus on English-speaking and Western European entities. While specific high-profile campaigns have not been extensively detailed in major public threat intelligence reports from CISA or FBI advisories, the group's consistent targeting of critical sectors like education and healthcare has drawn attention from security researchers monitoring threats to essential services. Vicesociety remains active as of recent threat intelligence assessments, continuing their operations against similar target sectors with no documented law enforcement disruption or significant operational changes. The group has been linked to 188 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on May 31, 2021; most recent post December 14, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

January 30, 2023Scheppersinstituut Wetteren listed by Vicesocietyon 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, Scheppersinstituut Wetteren is reported in Belgium, a country with 32 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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Scheppersinstituut Wetteren

Claimed by Vicesociety · listed 3 years ago

40m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Jan 30, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Vicesociety
Status: Data leaked
Country: Belgium
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Jan 30, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Scheppersinstituut Wetteren is a Catholic secondary school located in Wetteren, Belgium, operated by the Friars of Scheppers and part of the Katholieke Scholengemeenschap Wetteren-Lede (KSGWL). The school offers a broad range of study programmes across all grades of secondary education, including technical and vocational tracks. It is one of six secondary schools run by the Friars of Scheppers in Flanders.

Industry: Secondary Education
Address: Cooppallaan 128, 9230 Wetteren, Belgium

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been confirmed published by the group; as a school, the victim likely holds minors' PII, staff personal data, and potentially sensitive educational records, constituting regulated personal data under GDPR with particular sensitivity given the involvement of minors.

Vice Society claims to have attacked Scheppersinstituut Wetteren and has published data ('data_published' status), suggesting exfiltration of school data; no specific ransom amount or data volume was disclosed in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

School administrative records
Student data
Staff data
Internal school documents

What the group claims

Scheppersinstituut Wetteren is a company that operates in the Education industry. The Scheppers Institute is one of the 6 schools for Secondary Education of the Friars of Scheppers in Flanders.

Sources

Victim sitescheppers-wetteren.be/

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.