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

March 1, 2023Vesuvius listed by Vicesocietyon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Manufacturing sector, which has 2,458 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Vesuvius is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 902 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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Vesuvius

Claimed by Vicesociety · listed 3 years ago

39m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Mar 1, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Vicesociety
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Mar 1, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Vesuvius plc is a global leader in molten metal flow engineering, providing specialist products, technologies, and services primarily to the steel and foundry industries worldwide. The company operates 17 research centres globally and invests approximately £33.2 million annually in research and development. Vesuvius is headquartered in London, UK, and serves customers across more than 40 countries.

Industry: Advanced Ceramics & Molten Metal Flow Engineering
Address: 165 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AE, United Kingdom
Employees: 10000+
Founded: 1916

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been confirmed as published by a known ransomware group against a major publicly-listed global industrial manufacturer with significant intellectual property in advanced materials R&D; exfiltration of proprietary engineering and business data from a FTSE-listed company constitutes a high-severity incident, though no explicit PII-at-scale or regulated personal data exposure is confirmed from the available post.

Vice Society claims to have compromised Vesuvius and has published data, indicating confirmed exfiltration of company data; the leak post does not specify whether encryption was also deployed, but the disclosed status indicates data has been published.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Engineering and R&D documentation
Business operational data
Corporate internal files

What the group claims

Vesuvius provides engineering services and solutions principally to steel and foundry industries worldwide. With 17 research centres across the globe and an annual investment of 33.2 million in research and development, Vesuvius continues to lead innovation in our industry.

Sources

Victim sitevesuvius.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.