Proof pack
The sample of stolen files a ransomware crew publishes or shows a victim to prove the breach is real: file trees, contracts, ID scans, released ahead of the full dump.
Why it matters to you
The proof pack tells you what was actually taken, which is often narrower (or broader) than the attacker claims. Analyze it before negotiating.
Where we meet it
Proof packs are archived with the listing that carried them, timestamped. When the crew later revises its claim, the original is still in the case file.
Connected terms
DLS / leak site
A ransomware group's "dedicated leak site": victim announcements, countdown timers and proof packs, published to convert embarrassment into payment.
Double extortion
Steal the data first, encrypt second, and charge for both: one price to decrypt, another not to publish. Increasingly the theft alone, with no encryption at all, because publication is the half that forces payment.
Where this term stops being vocabulary
Dragnet is where you watch it happen to you
Knowing the word is the cheap half. The platform is the half where the term arrives attached to your domain, with a timestamp and the source it came from.
More from the playbook
Adversary-in-the-middle phishing
A phishing page that proxies the real login instead of imitating it. The victim authenticates against the genuine site through the attacker's server, completes multi-factor as normal, and the attacker keeps the resulting session cookie.
Business Email Compromise (BEC)
Fraud committed from inside a real mailbox: the attacker reads the thread, waits for an invoice and answers it with different bank details. No malware, no attachment, nothing for a scanner to find.
Callback phishing
An email that carries no link and no attachment, only a plausible invoice or subscription notice and a phone number to dispute it. The attack begins when the victim calls, and the person who answers walks them into installing remote access software.
Checker
A tool that tests stolen credentials against a target service in bulk and sorts the live ones from the dead. The industrialized step between a combolist and an account takeover.