LockBit is a highly prolific ransomware group that emerged in October 2020 and has become one of the most active ransomware operations globally, with over 3,500 documented victims and a primary motivation of financial gain through extortion. The group is suspected to originate from Russia and operates as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, recruiting affiliates to conduct attacks while providing them with ransomware tools, infrastructure, and support. LockBit primarily gains initial access through exploiting vulnerabilities in public-facing applications, credential stuffing attacks, and phishing campaigns, employing double extortion tactics where they steal sensitive data before encrypting systems and threatening to leak the information if ransom demands are not met. The group has demonstrated significant technical sophistication, developing multiple variants including LockBit 3.0 (also known as LockBit Black), and has been particularly active in targeting business services, manufacturing, technology, and healthcare sectors across the United States, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and Italy. Despite ongoing law enforcement efforts and international cooperation to disrupt their operations, including seizures of infrastructure and arrests of affiliates, LockBit has shown resilience and adaptability, continuing to operate and evolve their tactics while maintaining their position as one of the most dominant ransomware threats in the cybercriminal landscape. The group has been linked to 3,536 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 21, 2020; most recent post March 30, 2026. The operation is currently active.
Also tracked as: LockBit 3.0, LockBit Black, LockBit Green, ABCD ransomware.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Technology sector, which has 3,549 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, q-ads.com is reported in Germany, a country with 926 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.
If your organisation is affected
A listing by LockBit means q-ads.com 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, CERT-Bund (Germany), as required for your jurisdiction.
- Monitor for the data appearing on LockBit'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.
