Was bits-pilani.ac.in hit by ransomware?

bits-pilani.ac.in was listed by the Dragonforce ransomware operation (India), 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 Dragonforce ransomware group?

Dragonforce 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 bits-pilani.ac.in breach?

Dragonforce published data attributed to bits-pilani.ac.in. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS Pilani)

listed as bits-pilani.ac.in · Claimed by Dragonforce · listed 11 days ago

11d

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJun 22, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Dragonforce
Status: Data leaked
Country: India
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Jun 22, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

BITS Pilani is a premier Indian private research university and designated Institution of Eminence, founded in 1964. It operates five campuses across India and internationally, offering undergraduate and postgraduate programs in engineering, science, pharmacy, law, business, and design. The institution is highly selective with a 1.47% acceptance rate and serves thousands of students across multiple disciplines.

Industry: Higher Education & Research
Address: Pilani, Rajasthan, India (primary campus); additional campuses in Goa, Hyderabad, Dubai, and Mumbai
Founded: 1964

Attack summary

Severity: high — Large educational institution with thousands of students and faculty; likely exposure of PII and academic records at significant scale. Confirmed data publication by ransomware operator indicates exfiltration beyond encryption-only attack.

The dragonforce group claims to have conducted a ransomware attack on BITS Pilani. The leak post indicates data exfiltration, though specific data categories and operational details are not elaborated in the provided excerpt.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Faculty information
Administrative data
Academic records

What the group claims

BITS Pilani is a premier Indian private research university and "Institution of Eminence" known for elite engineering and science programs across five campuses. Founded in 1964, it is highly selective with a 1.47% acceptance rate and offers a 0% attendance policy with mandatory industry immersion.

Sources

Source

Indexed 11 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.

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Disclosure context

About Dragonforce

Dragonforce is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in December 2023, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their targeting patterns and victim selection. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain unclear due to limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources, though their rapid accumulation of 439 documented victims suggests either sophisticated capabilities or possible connections to existing ransomware infrastructure. Based on their targeting patterns across diverse sectors including manufacturing, business services, technology, and construction, Dragonforce appears to employ opportunistic attack methodologies, though specific initial access vectors, encryption methods, and extortion tactics have not been publicly detailed by major security firms or law enforcement agencies. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting organizations primarily in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Italy representing their most frequent victim locations, suggesting possible language capabilities or geographic operational preferences. As of current reporting, Dragonforce appears to remain active given their recent emergence and ongoing victim acquisition, though the lack of detailed public analysis from major threat intelligence organizations indicates either operational security measures that have limited researcher visibility or that the group has not yet conducted sufficiently high-profile attacks to warrant extensive public documentation by CISA, FBI, or established security research firms. The group has been linked to 606 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 13, 2023; most recent post June 29, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: DRAGON FORCE.

Timeline of this disclosure

June 22, 2026bits-pilani.ac.in listed by Dragonforceon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Dragonforce

Dragonforce has been linked to 606 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Dragonforce 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, bits-pilani.ac.in is reported in India, a country with 240 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Dragonforce means bits-pilani.ac.in 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-In (India), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Dragonforce'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.