Was northgatesd.net hit by ransomware?

northgatesd.net was listed by the Darkpower 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 Darkpower ransomware group?

Darkpower 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 northgatesd.net breach?

Darkpower published data attributed to northgatesd.net. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Northgate School District

listed as northgatesd.net · Claimed by Darkpower · listed 3 years ago

40m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 11, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Darkpower
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Mar 11, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Northgate School District is a public K-12 school district located in the Boroughs of Avalon and Bellevue, approximately 7.5 miles northwest of downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, serving a community of just over 13,000 residents. The district operates four schools across three buildings — Avalon Elementary, Bellevue Elementary, Northgate Middle School, and Northgate High School — and employs 99 full-time teachers alongside qualified support staff. The district offers a range of academic programs including career education, online learning, and arts programs.

Industry: K-12 Public Education
Address: Avalon and Bellevue Boroughs, approximately 7.5 miles northwest of downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Employees: 99 full-time teachers plus support staff (est. 150-299 total)

Attack summary

Severity: high — The disclosed status is 'data_published,' indicating data was exfiltrated and released. As a K-12 school district, the data almost certainly includes minor students' PII, potentially health/special education records protected under FERPA and HIPAA, which constitutes sensitive regulated data at meaningful scale.

The Darkpower ransomware group claims an attack on Northgate School District with a disclosed status of 'data_published,' indicating exfiltration and/or publication of data. No leak post details, ransom demand, or specific data volume were captured.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records (likely)
Staff personnel records (likely)
Financial and operations data (likely)
Health and wellness records (likely)
Special services / IEP records (likely)

Sources

Victim sitenorthgatesd.net
Leak posthttp://powerj7kmpzkdhjg4szvcxxgktgk36ezpjxvtosylrpey7svpmrjyuyd.onion/b22c1ee3685e4198931f5f8b0ffceff5

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 Darkpower

Darkpower is a relatively obscure ransomware group that emerged in March 2023, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their targeting patterns and ransom demands. The group's origin and potential state affiliations remain unclear due to limited public documentation by major threat intelligence organizations, though their diverse geographic targeting across Turkey, Czech Republic, France, Peru, and Algeria suggests either opportunistic selection or a broad operational scope. With only 10 documented victims since their emergence, Darkpower appears to be a smaller-scale operation that has specifically focused on healthcare sector organizations, potentially indicating either specialized capabilities for compromising medical infrastructure or opportunistic targeting of organizations perceived as more likely to pay ransoms quickly due to operational criticality. The group's specific attack methodologies, initial access vectors, and technical capabilities have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports from major security firms or government agencies. Given the limited public information available and the relatively small victim count, Darkpower's current operational status remains unclear, though the group has not been subject to any publicized law enforcement actions or confirmed disruptions as of late 2023. The group has been linked to 10 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on March 11, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: Dark Power.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 11, 2023northgatesd.net listed by Darkpoweron the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Darkpower

Darkpower has been linked to 10 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Darkpower dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,082 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, northgatesd.net is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Darkpower means northgatesd.net 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 Darkpower'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.