Was Pacific Union College hit by ransomware?

Pacific Union College was listed by the Trigona 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 Trigona ransomware group?

Trigona 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 Pacific Union College breach?

Trigona published data attributed to Pacific Union College. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Pacific Union College

Claimed by Trigona · listed 3 years ago

38m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 30, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Trigona
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: May 30, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Pacific Union College (PUC) is a private, Seventh-day Adventist liberal arts college located in Angwin, California, accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs across disciplines including nursing, business, theology, aviation, and the sciences. The college operates multiple campuses including its main campus in Angwin and education centers in Napa, Sonora, and the North Coast.

Industry: Higher Education (Private Liberal Arts College)
Address: Angwin, California, United States
Employees: 201-500
Founded: 1882

Attack summary

Severity: high — The disclosure status is 'data_published', indicating confirmed exfiltration and public release of data from an educational institution. A college holds significant volumes of regulated PII including student records (potentially protected under FERPA), financial aid data, and staff personal information, warranting a high severity classification.

The Trigona ransomware group claims to have attacked Pacific Union College and has published data as part of a disclosed leak, though the specific nature of the attack (encryption, exfiltration, or both) and the volume of data exfiltrated are not explicitly detailed in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Faculty and staff data
Academic records
Admissions and financial aid information
Personal identifiable information (PII)

What the group claims

Pacific Union College (PUC) is a private, Seventh-day Adventist college located in Angwin, California. It was established in 1882 and is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission.

Sources

Victim sitepuc.edu

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 Trigona

Trigona is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in April 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors globally. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain unclear based on publicly available intelligence, though their targeting patterns suggest they operate as an independent entity rather than a established Ransomware-as-a-Service operation. Trigona employs double extortion tactics, combining data encryption with data exfiltration and threats to publish stolen information on leak sites, though specific details about their initial access vectors and encryption methods have not been extensively documented by major security researchers. The group has claimed 49 victims as of current reporting, with their attacks concentrated in the United States, Australia, Mexico, France, and Indonesia, primarily targeting business services, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, and finance sectors. Given the group's recent emergence in 2023, there are no widely reported major campaigns or significant law enforcement actions documented by CISA, FBI, or established threat intelligence firms. Trigona appears to remain active as of current intelligence assessments, though the limited public documentation reflects their relatively recent entry into the ransomware landscape. The group has been linked to 49 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 17, 2023; most recent post March 30, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 30, 2023Pacific Union College listed by Trigonaon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Trigona

Trigona has been linked to 49 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Trigona 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, Pacific Union College is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Trigona means Pacific Union 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 Trigona'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.