LockBit, also known as LockBit 2.0, is a financially motivated ransomware-as-a-service operation that emerged in September 2021 as an evolution of the original LockBit group, quickly establishing itself as one of the most prolific and aggressive ransomware operations globally. The group is believed to operate from Russia or former Soviet states, following the typical RaaS model where the core developers provide the ransomware tools and infrastructure to affiliate operators who conduct the actual attacks in exchange for a percentage of ransom payments. LockBit primarily gains initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol credentials, exploitation of public-facing applications, and phishing campaigns, employing a triple extortion model that combines file encryption, data theft with threatened publication on their leak site, and increasingly includes threats to contact victims' customers and business partners directly. The group has been responsible for over 1,000 documented victim organizations, with particularly heavy targeting of entities in Italy, Germany, France, Canada, and Australia across critical infrastructure sectors including healthcare, financial services, and government organizations. Notable incidents include attacks on major healthcare systems, manufacturing companies, and government entities, with the group consistently ranking among the top ransomware threats in law enforcement and cybersecurity reporting throughout 2022 and 2023. Despite ongoing international law enforcement pressure and sanctions, including disruption attempts by agencies such as the FBI and Europol, LockBit continues to operate actively with regular updates to their ransomware variants and recruitment of new affiliates. The group has been linked to 1,002 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2021; most recent post June 28, 2022. The operation is currently inactive.
If your organisation is affected
A listing by lockbit2 means https://www.vit... 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.
- Monitor for the data appearing on lockbit2'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.
