PHP2Shell was in the wild four days before the fix, and most of what hit the sensors afterwards does not work

• SurgingHelix — 9 claims in 7 days against 0.8 expected from its own prior rate (p < 0.001)
• SurgingBrainCipher — 8 claims in 7 days against 1.6 expected from its own prior rate (p < 0.001)
• SurgingN0n — 44 claims in 7 days against 24.9 expected from its own prior rate (p < 0.001)
• SurgingSilentRansomGroup — 9 claims in 7 days against 2.3 expected from its own prior rate (p < 0.001)
• Surginglamashtu — 6 claims in 7 days against 1.2 expected from its own prior rate (p = 0.001)
• Surgingeverest — 9 claims in 7 days against 2.8 expected from its own prior rate (p = 0.002)

Gone quiet: blackwater (60 days), coinbasecartel (61 days), xpl0itrs (64 days), CRPxO (82 days).

Sector pressure, 30 days

• UpTransportation — 2.1× its own prior share (69 claims, 32 expected)
• UpEducation — 1.9× its own prior share (47 claims, 25 expected)
• UpHealthcare — 1.5× its own prior share (115 claims, 77 expected)
• DownRetail & E-Commerce — 0.8× its own prior share (47 claims, 60 expected)

23% of claims carry no sector label.

Brand churn

Of the 79 leak-site brands first seen since 2026-06-01, 77% were still claiming 30 days after their first post and 77% were still claiming 60 days after their first post (Kaplan-Meier; quiet = 60 days without a claim). 18% of the 56 old enough to judge posted on one day and never again; 41% made at least half their claims in their first week. New brands this month: 10 — newest: Mimori (2026-10-20, 2 claims), THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS (2026-10-16, 8 claims), 0x00 (2026-10-15, 1 claim).

Brands born before coverage began are excluded (their true age is unknown); a rebrand counts as one brand going quiet and another being born.

Targeting

Over the last 180 days, among brands with at least 20 labelled claims: safepay put 35% of its claims on Germany (6.8× every other brand's share); N0n put 39% of its claims on Transportation (8.6× every other brand's share); Storm put 78% of its claims on the United States (2.1× every other brand's share). Widest spread: qilin across 10.0 effective sectors.

Lift = the brand's share of a sector or country over every other brand's share in the same window; exact binomial tails, Bonferroni-adjusted for the categories tested. Claims with no sector or an Unknown/Other label are excluded.

Posting clock

Over the last 180 days, among brands with at least 30 claims: clop released 94% of its claims on Wednesdays, half of them in 13:00–15:59 UTC; safepay released 68% of its claims on Mondays, half of them in 19:00–19:59 UTC; akira posted only 1 of 178 claims at weekends and half its claims in 12:00–13:59 UTC; half of Deadlock's claims appeared in 12:00–13:59 UTC. Leak sites overall are 41% quieter per weekend day than per weekday.

all brands by hour of day, 00–23 UTC; half of all claims land in 12:00–19:59 UTC.

Times are when trackers first saw each claim on the leak site, in UTC: not the attack time, not the operator's clock, and a site that is only reachable at certain hours shows the same pattern; batch releases show as spikes. Hour-of-day concentration: Rayleigh test; weekday shares: exact binomial against every other brand, Bonferroni-adjusted.

Leak-site claims as discovered by trackers, not confirmed breaches. Surprise compares the last 7 days with the group's own prior 173 days (Poisson). Victim claims: ransomware.live and leak-site trackers

Today’s numbers as JSON →