Skip to main content

Ransomware victim disclosure

All victims

Tax-MT

listed as The DeBruler · Claimed by Play · listed 6 days ago

5d
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedJul 23, 2026
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Play
Status
Data leaked
Listed on leak site
Jul 23, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Tax-MT is a locally owned tax accounting and financial services firm based in Billings, Montana. They provide personal and business tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll management, financial planning, and consulting services to the local community. The firm employs experienced CPAs and certified tax professionals.

Industry
Accounting & Tax Services
Address
Billings, MT, United States

Attack summary

Severity: high — Tax and accounting firm with likely access to PII, financial records, and tax documents for numerous clients. Confirmed data publication by Play group. High sensitivity due to nature of financial and tax data at scale.

The Play ransomware group claims to have compromised Tax-MT and published data. The specific nature of the attack (encryption, exfiltration, or both) and details of exfiltrated data are not disclosed in the available leak post excerpt.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Tax returns
  • Client financial records
  • Payroll information
  • Business tax filings
  • Personal financial data

What the group claims

United States

Sources

Source

Indexed 6 days 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.

Is this your supplier? Your competitor? You?

Pro plans monitor your domain, corporate emails, and crypto wallets across every new ransomware leak-site post, breach dump and Telegram callout — alerts within 5 minutes.

Disclosure context

About Play

**Overview:** Play (also known as PlayCrypt) is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in late 2022, conducting targeted attacks against organizations across multiple sectors with a focus on financial extortion. **Origin & Affiliation:** The group's country of origin remains unclear based on public reporting, though they appear to operate independently rather than as a traditional ransomware-as-a-service model. **Attack Methodology:** Play ransomware operators typically gain initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials and exploit valid accounts, then move laterally through networks using tools like Cobalt Strike before deploying their custom ransomware payload. The group employs double extortion tactics, stealing sensitive data before encryption and threatening to publish it on their leak site if ransom demands are not met. **Notable Campaigns:** According to CISA advisories, Play has targeted over 300 entities globally since its emergence, with significant impacts on critical infrastructure sectors including healthcare, education, and government services, though specific ransom amounts and individual victim details vary in public reporting. **Current Status:** Play remains an active threat as of 2024, continuing to target organizations primarily in North America and Europe according to ongoing security researcher observations and law enforcement warnings. The group has been linked to 1,326 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 26, 2022; most recent post July 23, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: PlayCrypt.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • July 23, 2026The DeBruler listed by Playon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

Geographically, The DeBruler is reported in United States, a country with 3,138 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Play means The DeBruler 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 Play'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.