Was Chattanooga State Community College hit by ransomware?

Chattanooga State Community College was listed by the Snatch 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 Snatch ransomware group?

Snatch 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 Chattanooga State Community College breach?

Snatch published data attributed to Chattanooga State Community College. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Chattanooga State Community College

Claimed by Snatch · listed 3 years ago

38m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 23, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Snatch
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: May 23, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Chattanooga State Community College is a public two-year institution located on the Tennessee River approximately 10 minutes northeast of downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. It offers associate degrees, technical certificates, and workforce development programs to a broad regional student population. The college serves as a central hub for its academic and social community across a multi-building campus.

Industry: Community College / Higher Education
Address: 4501 Amnicola Highway, Chattanooga, TN 37406, United States
Employees: 501-1000
Founded: 1965

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a public educational institution holding regulated data including student PII (likely FERPA-protected records), financial aid information, and staff data. The disclosed status is 'data_published,' confirming actual exfiltration and release of data rather than a mere listing, which elevates this to critical severity.

The Snatch ransomware group has published data associated with Chattanooga State Community College, indicating exfiltration of institutional data; the post status is 'data_published,' suggesting stolen files have been released or made available on the group's leak site.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Employee/staff records
Institutional administrative data
Potentially financial aid records
Potentially personally identifiable information (PII)

What the group claims

Chattanooga State is a special place designed to give you an inviting setting to learn and gather with friends. Our beautiful campus is located on the Tennessee River, just 10 minutes northeast of downtown and serves as the center of the ChattState community. It features

Sources

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 Snatch

Snatch is a ransomware group that emerged in November 2021, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors including business services, government, education, manufacturing, and healthcare. The group has compromised at least 142 known victims, with their attacks concentrated primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and France. Little is publicly documented about Snatch's specific country of origin or affiliations with other cybercriminal organizations, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent ransomware operation. The group's attack methodology and specific technical details regarding initial access vectors, encryption methods, and data exfiltration practices have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports from major security firms or government agencies. While Snatch has maintained a notable victim count across diverse geographic regions and industry sectors, there are no widely reported major campaigns or high-profile attacks that have drawn significant public attention or law enforcement action. Based on available public information, Snatch appears to remain an active ransomware operation as of recent reporting periods, though comprehensive details about their current operational status and recent activities are limited in open-source intelligence. The group has been linked to 142 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 29, 2021; most recent post May 16, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 23, 2023Chattanooga State Community College listed by Snatchon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Snatch

Snatch has been linked to 142 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Snatch dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,085 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Chattanooga State Community College is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Snatch means Chattanooga State Community College 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 Snatch'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.