Was The City of Hesperia, CA hit by ransomware?

The City of Hesperia, CA was listed by the INC Ransom 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 INC Ransom ransomware group?

INC Ransom 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 The City of Hesperia, CA breach?

INC Ransom published data attributed to The City of Hesperia, CA. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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The City of Hesperia, CA

Claimed by INC Ransom · listed 3 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 4, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: INC Ransom
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Public Sector
Listed on leak site: Mar 4, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The City of Hesperia is a municipal government entity located in San Bernardino County, California, incorporated in 1988. It provides public services including administration, public works, planning, and law enforcement coordination to approximately 100,000 residents in the High Desert region. As a local government body, it maintains a wide range of sensitive records relating to residents, employees, contracts, and financial transactions.

Industry: Municipal Government
Address: 9700 Seventh Avenue, Hesperia, CA 92345, United States
Employees: 201-500
Founded: 1988

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration and publication of regulated PII at scale (employees and government officials), financial records, and sensitive government contracts/NDAs from a municipal government entity; data_published status indicates the data has already been released publicly.

INC Ransom claims to have exfiltrated files containing sensitive government data including state secrets, NDAs, contracts with public and private entities, personal data of employees and government officials, and financial records including transactions, payments, and tax documents; the disclosure status is listed as data_published indicating the stolen data has been released.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

State secrets / classified government documents
Non-disclosure agreements
Contracts with private and public companies
Employee personal data (PII)
Government officials' personal data (PII)
Transaction records
Payment documents
Tax documents

What the group claims

Access was gained to files containing state secrets, non-disclosure agreements, contracts with private and public companies, as well as personal data of employees and government officials. Transactions, payment, and tax documents were also obtained.

Source

Indexed 3 months 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 INC Ransom

INC Ransom is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in September 2021 and has since compromised 832 known victims across multiple sectors. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain undocumented in public threat intelligence reports, though their operational patterns suggest they likely operate as an independent entity rather than a formal Ransomware-as-a-Service model. While detailed attack methodologies for INC Ransom have not been extensively documented by major security firms, their victim distribution indicates they employ broad-spectrum targeting approaches that have successfully penetrated healthcare, technology, business services, and manufacturing organizations. The group demonstrates a preference for targeting English-speaking countries, with the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom representing their primary victim demographics, alongside significant activity in Germany and Australia. Notable campaigns or high-profile attacks by INC Ransom have not been prominently featured in major threat intelligence publications from CISA, FBI, or leading security researchers, suggesting they may operate with a lower public profile despite their substantial victim count. INC Ransom remains active as of current intelligence assessments, with no documented law enforcement disruptions or confirmed rebranding efforts. The group has been linked to 853 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2021; most recent post June 6, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: INC.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 4, 2026The City of Hesperia, CA listed by INC Ransomon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by INC Ransom

INC Ransom has been linked to 853 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full INC Ransom dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Public Sector sector, which has 260 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, The City of Hesperia, CA is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by INC Ransom means The City of Hesperia, CA 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.
Monitor for the data appearing on INC Ransom'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.