Was Colonial Pipeline Company hit by ransomware?

Colonial Pipeline Company was listed by the Ransomedvc 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 Ransomedvc ransomware group?

Ransomedvc 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 Colonial Pipeline Company breach?

Ransomedvc published data attributed to Colonial Pipeline Company. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Colonial Pipeline Company

Claimed by Ransomedvc · listed 3 years ago

33m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedOct 15, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Ransomedvc
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Energy & Utilities
Listed on leak site: Oct 15, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Colonial Pipeline Company operates the largest refined petroleum products pipeline system in the United States, spanning approximately 5,500 miles and transporting gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and home heating oil across 14 states from Texas to New Jersey. The company supplies roughly 45% of fuel consumed on the US East Coast. It is a critical infrastructure operator under the energy and utilities sector.

Industry: Petroleum Pipeline Transportation & Energy Infrastructure
Address: 1185 Sanctuary Pkwy, Suite 400, Alpharetta, GA 30009, United States
Employees: 500-1000
Founded: 1962

Attack summary

Severity: high — Colonial Pipeline is designated critical national infrastructure; any confirmed data publication against this target is inherently high severity due to national energy security implications. The 'data_published' status confirms exfiltration occurred, though the scope and nature of the published data are not fully detailed in the truncated post.

RansomedVC claims to have compromised Colonial Pipeline Company and has published data, though the leak post focuses heavily on alleged insider/cybersecurity-executive misconduct rather than detailing specific exfiltrated datasets or encryption activity. No ransom amount or data volume was stated.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Unspecified internal company data
Potential cybersecurity personnel records
Possible network/infrastructure documentation

What the group claims

Threat actors – they hide amongst us. It is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate these bad actors from our heroic cyber front-line responders, who work night & day to protect their clients from ever-growing cyber threats. In fact, as we’ll discuss here, some of these threat actors operate under the guise of powerful cyber-security executives.…

Sources

Victim sitecolonialpipeline.com

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 Ransomedvc

Ransomedvc is a financially-motivated ransomware group that emerged in August 2023, representing one of the newer entrants in the ransomware ecosystem with a documented victim count of 68 organizations. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from major cybersecurity organizations, specific details about their country of origin and operational structure remain unclear, though their targeting patterns suggest they operate as an independent group rather than a established RaaS operation. The group demonstrates a preference for targeting critical infrastructure sectors, particularly focusing on Food & Agriculture and Healthcare organizations across a geographically diverse range of countries including Bulgaria, Brazil, Japan, Australia, and Russia, indicating either a broad opportunistic approach or the use of automated scanning tools to identify vulnerable systems. While comprehensive details about their specific attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and whether they employ double or triple extortion tactics have not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence firms, their targeting of healthcare and food sector organizations suggests they may leverage the critical nature of these services to pressure victims into payment. The group's notable campaign activity appears concentrated in their operational period since mid-2023, though no major high-profile attacks or significant law enforcement actions have been publicly reported by CISA, FBI, or other authoritative sources. Ransomedvc appears to remain active as of the latest available intelligence, though their relatively recent emergence means their long-term operational patterns and potential for rebranding or law enforcement disruption remain to be observed. The group has been linked to 68 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on August 21, 2023; most recent post October 30, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 15, 2023Colonial Pipeline Company listed by Ransomedvcon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Ransomedvc

Ransomedvc has been linked to 68 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Ransomedvc dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Energy & Utilities sector, which has 163 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Colonial Pipeline Company is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Ransomedvc means Colonial Pipeline Company 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 Ransomedvc'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.