Was Thomaston Mills hit by ransomware?

Thomaston Mills was listed by the Royal 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 Royal ransomware group?

Royal 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 Thomaston Mills breach?

Royal published data attributed to Thomaston Mills. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Thomaston Mills

Claimed by Royal · listed 3 years ago

40m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 9, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Royal
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Mar 9, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Thomaston Mills is a family-owned US textile manufacturer founded in 1899, specializing in the production and distribution of bed and bath linens for the hospitality, healthcare, and institutional markets. The company operates a bleachery in Easley, South Carolina, and a 400,000+ square-foot manufacturing and warehousing facility in Thomaston, Georgia. It annually produces over 450,000 dozen sheets and 1,000,000 dozen pillowcases, supplying hotels, resorts, casinos, healthcare facilities, and cruise lines.

Industry: Textile Manufacturing & Distribution — Hospitality and Healthcare Linens
Address: Manufacturing/bleachery: Easley, South Carolina; Warehousing/manufacturing facility: Thomaston, Georgia, USA
Founded: 1899

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been confirmed as published by the Royal group, indicating successful exfiltration rather than a mere listing. The victim serves healthcare facilities and large institutional clients, raising the likelihood that business-sensitive and potentially regulated customer data (including healthcare sector clients) is involved. No explicit PII-at-scale or medical records confirmed, which keeps this below critical.

The Royal ransomware group has published data obtained from Thomaston Mills, indicating a confirmed data exfiltration event. The disclosed status of 'data_published' suggests sensitive company data has been released, though no specific data categories or ransom amount were stated in the post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Business operational data
Customer records (hospitality, healthcare, institutional clients)
Manufacturing and distribution records
Corporate/financial information

What the group claims

Thomaston Mills was founded in 1899 by R.E. Hightower and is the oldest domestic sheet mill in the USA. We were owned by the Hightower family until 2001, and have been owned by the Zaslow family since that time. Combined the two families have over 200 years of textile experience. Thomaston Mills continues to operate as a family business that puts the customer first.We currently specialize in manufacturing and distribution of the highest quality bed and bath linens to the hospitality, healthcare and institutional markets. We finish millions of yards of fabric each year at our bleachery in Easley, South Carolina and cut and sew this fabric in our 250,000 square foot manufacturing and warehousing facility located in Thomaston, GA.

Sources

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 Royal

Royal is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in November 2022, quickly establishing itself as a significant threat with over 200 documented victims across multiple sectors. The group is believed to operate independently rather than as a ransomware-as-a-service model, though their exact country of origin remains unclear based on publicly available intelligence. Royal primarily gains initial access through phishing campaigns and exploitation of remote desktop protocols, subsequently deploying custom ransomware that encrypts victim files while exfiltrating sensitive data for double extortion tactics. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting critical infrastructure and public services, with notable attacks against educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and government entities primarily in the United States, though they have also significantly impacted organizations across Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France. Their encryption methodology involves custom-built malware that systematically encrypts files while maintaining persistence on compromised networks. As of recent reporting from federal agencies including CISA and FBI advisories, Royal remains an active threat with ongoing campaigns targeting organizations across their preferred sectors, particularly focusing on entities with limited cybersecurity resources that may be more likely to pay ransom demands. The group has been linked to 211 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 4, 2022; most recent post July 19, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 9, 2023Thomaston Mills listed by Royalon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Royal

Royal has been linked to 211 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Royal dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Manufacturing sector, which has 3,681 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Thomaston Mills is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Royal means Thomaston Mills 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 Royal'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.