Was City of Modesto hit by ransomware?

City of Modesto 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 City of Modesto breach?

Nokoyawa published data attributed to City of Modesto. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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City of Modesto

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: Government
Listed on leak site: May 23, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The City of Modesto is the county seat and largest city of Stanislaus County, California, with a population of approximately 218,464 as of the 2020 census, making it the 19th largest city in California. It operates as a full-service municipal government providing public safety, utilities, infrastructure, community development, and other civic services to its residents. The city is part of the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto Combined Statistical Area.

Industry: Municipal Government
Address: 1010 10th Street, Modesto, CA 95354, United States
Employees: 1000-5000
Founded: 1884

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a municipal government serving over 218,000 residents; data_published status confirms exfiltration and public release of government data, which likely includes regulated PII, financial records, and potentially law enforcement or public safety information at scale.

The Nokoyawa ransomware group claims an attack on the City of Modesto and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), indicating exfiltration of city government data. No ransom amount or specific data volume was stated in the post.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

City government records
Potentially resident PII
Potentially employee records
Potentially financial records
Potentially law enforcement or public safety data

What the group claims

Modesto is the county seat and largest city of Stanislaus County, California, United States. With a population of 218,464 at the 2020 census, it is the 19th largest city in the state of California and forms part of the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto Combined Statistical Area.The city is surrounded by...

Sources

Victim sitemodestogov.com
Leak posthttp://nokoleakb76znymx443veg4n6fytx6spck6pc7nkr4dvfuygpub6jsid.onion/leak/6428d0058e0bf246d7e4e2f6

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, 2023City of Modesto 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 Government sector, which has 685 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, City of Modesto 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 City of Modesto 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.