Was highwirepress.com hit by ransomware?

highwirepress.com was listed by the babuk2 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 babuk2 ransomware group?

babuk2 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 highwirepress.com breach?

babuk2 published data attributed to highwirepress.com. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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highwirepress.com

Claimed by Babuk2 · listed 1 year ago

16m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 18, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Babuk2
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Technology
Listed on leak site: Mar 18, 2025

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

HighWire Press is a digital publishing platform provider founded in 1995, originally spun out of Stanford University. They host and manage scholarly content including academic journals, preprint repositories, and books for major publishers and scientific societies worldwide, processing over 85 million monthly search requests and 60 million monthly users.

Industry: Scholarly Publishing & Digital Content Hosting
Founded: 1995

Attack summary

Severity: high — HighWire hosts sensitive scholarly publishing infrastructure and content for major scientific organizations and publishers. A confirmed breach of this central publishing platform could expose manuscripts under review, subscriber data, and operational systems used by the global academic publishing ecosystem. However, no specific proof or data inventory details are provided in the truncated post, limiting confidence in the breach claim.

The babuk2 group claims to have breached HighWire Press but provides minimal detail in the leak post excerpt. No specific data exfiltration or encryption claims are detailed; only the domain name is listed.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Academic journal content
Publisher databases
User/subscriber data
Peer review manuscripts
Publishing platform infrastructure

What the group claims

highwirepress.com

Sources

Source

Indexed 1 year 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 babuk2

Babuk2 appears to be a recently emerged ransomware operation first observed in January 2025, representing either a new variant or successor to the original Babuk ransomware group, with apparent financial motivations based on their targeting patterns across multiple sectors and geographic regions. Given the limited timeframe since their emergence and the naming convention, this group likely operates independently or represents a rebrand/evolution of previous Babuk operations, though definitive attribution remains unclear due to the recency of their activities. Based on their targeting patterns across diverse sectors including public sector entities, technology companies, healthcare organizations, and manufacturing firms, the group appears to employ broad-spectrum attack methodologies typical of modern ransomware operations, though specific technical details regarding their initial access vectors, encryption methods, and extortion tactics have not yet been extensively documented by major security researchers. With 180 documented victims across multiple countries including significant activity in the United States, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and China within just the first month of 2025, Babuk2 has demonstrated a notably aggressive operational tempo, though specific high-profile incidents or ransom demands have not yet been publicly detailed by major cybersecurity firms or law enforcement agencies. The group appears to remain actively operational as of early 2025, though their recent emergence means long-term operational patterns and potential law enforcement responses are still developing. The group has been linked to 180 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on January 27, 2025; most recent post April 23, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 18, 2025highwirepress.com listed by babuk2on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by babuk2

babuk2 has been linked to 180 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full babuk2 dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Technology sector, which has 3,549 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, highwirepress.com is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by babuk2 means highwirepress.com 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 babuk2'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.