Was instinctpetfood.com hit by ransomware?

instinctpetfood.com was listed by the Black Basta 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 Black Basta ransomware group?

Black Basta 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 instinctpetfood.com breach?

Black Basta published data attributed to instinctpetfood.com (~1.5 TB), around 3. Users records. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Instinct Pet Food

listed as instinctpetfood.com · Claimed by Black Basta · listed 2 years ago

1.5 TB

Data size

3. Users records

20m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedNov 19, 2024
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Black Basta
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Agriculture and Food Production
Listed on leak site: Nov 19, 2024
Data size: 1.5 TB
Records: 3. Users

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Instinct Pet Food is a family-owned company specializing in natural, minimally processed pet food for dogs and cats. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, they manufacture a range of products including frozen raw meals, freeze-dried meals, kibble, toppers, and wet food, with a mission centered on raw nutrition for pets.

Industry: Pet Food Manufacturing & Natural Nutrition
Address: 55 West Port Plaza Drive, Suite 200, St. Louis, MO 63146, United States

Attack summary

Severity: high — Confirmed exfiltration and publication of 1.5 TB of sensitive business data including employee HR records, financial/payroll information, and corporate documents. No regulated health/medical data evident, but scale and nature of exfiltrated data (financial, HR, personal folders) warrant high classification.

BlackBasta claims to have exfiltrated approximately 1.5 TB of company data, including human resources records, corporate financial and payroll information, user personal folders, R&D materials, and tax/accounting documents. The group has published data as proof of the breach.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Human Resources records
Financial data
Payroll records
Tax documents
Accounting data
User personal folders
Corporate documents
R&D materials

What the group claims

Instinct Pet Food is a family-owned pet food company that makes natural, minimally processed food for dogs and cats. Their products include: frozen raw meals, freeze-dried raw meals, kibble, raw toppers, and wet food. Instinct Pet Food’s mission is to improve the lives of pets by providing them with real, natural food. They believe that raw nutrition is unmatched and that food has the power to change a pet’s life.SITE: www.naturesvariety.com | www.instinctpetfood.com Address : 55 West Port Plaza Drive, Suite 200 St. Louis, MO 63146 United StatesTEL#: (314) 590-5700ALL DATA SIZE: ≈1.5tb 1. Human Resources 2. Corporate data(Financial, Payroll, Tax, Accounting… 3. Users Personal folders and documents 4. R&D & etc…

Sources

Victim siteinstinctpetfood.com
Leak posthttp://stniiomyjliimcgkvdszvgen3eaaoz55hreqqx6o77yvmpwt7gklffqd.onion/?id=instinctpetfood.com

Source

Indexed 2 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 Black Basta

Black Basta is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in April 2022 and has since compromised approximately 800 organizations worldwide. The group operates as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model with suspected ties to the now-defunct Conti ransomware operation, though their exact country of origin remains unconfirmed by law enforcement agencies. Black Basta primarily gains initial access through phishing campaigns, exploitation of known vulnerabilities, and credential stuffing attacks, subsequently deploying their custom ransomware that employs ChaCha20 encryption algorithm and employs double extortion tactics by exfiltrating sensitive data before encryption and threatening to publish it on their leak site if ransom demands are not met. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and Italy, with a particular focus on business services, manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and agriculture sectors. Notable victims have included various healthcare systems and manufacturing companies, though specific ransom amounts and high-profile attacks have not been widely disclosed in public law enforcement advisories. As of 2024, Black Basta remains an active threat with continued operations and regular updates to their leak site indicating ongoing compromise activities. The group has been linked to 1,323 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 26, 2022; most recent post January 11, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: BlackBasta.

Timeline of this disclosure

November 19, 2024instinctpetfood.com listed by Black Bastaon the group's public leak site

Data size: 1.5 TB
Records: 3. Users

Other recent disclosures by Black Basta

Black Basta has been linked to 1,323 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Black Basta dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Agriculture and Food Production sector, which has 772 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, instinctpetfood.com is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Black Basta means instinctpetfood.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, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Black Basta'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.