Was Clear Align hit by ransomware?

Clear Align was listed by the Qilin 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 Qilin ransomware group?

Qilin 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 Clear Align breach?

Qilin published data attributed to Clear Align. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Clear Align

Claimed by Qilin · listed 12 hours ago

Today

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 23, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Qilin
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Professional Services
Listed on leak site: Aug 23, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Clear Align designs and manufactures advanced electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) imaging systems, cameras, and optical components for defense, aerospace, and security applications. The company operates a vertically integrated manufacturing facility producing thermal imagers, C5ISR systems, and multi-band infrared payloads, with over 30,000 systems deployed globally across 27+ countries.

Industry: Defense & Aerospace – Electro-Optics / Infrared Imaging Systems

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Victim is a U.S. defense contractor with classified/sensitive customer relationships and likely possesses regulated technical data (ITAR-controlled optical designs, military system specifications). However, without the leak post itself, no proof of exfiltration is evident, and the nature of the breach cannot be confirmed. The 'data_published' status suggests active disclosure, but absent specifics, severity is conservatively assessed as medium.

The leak post itself was not provided (marked 'N/A'). The disclosure status is listed as 'data_published' but without the group's leak post text, the specific claims regarding encryption, exfiltration, or data scope cannot be verified.

medium

What the group claims

N/A

Sources

Source

Indexed 12 hours 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.

Is this your supplier? Your competitor? You?

Pro plans monitor your domain, corporate emails, and crypto wallets across every new ransomware leak-site post, breach dump and Telegram callout — alerts within 5 minutes.

Disclosure context

About Qilin

Qilin is a ransomware group that emerged in October 2022, operating with primarily financial motivations through targeted attacks against organizations across multiple sectors. The group appears to operate independently with limited public information available regarding their specific country of origin or affiliations to other ransomware families. Qilin employs double extortion tactics, typically exfiltrating sensitive data before deploying their encryption payload, though specific details about their initial access vectors and technical tools remain less documented in public security research. The group has demonstrated a broad targeting approach, with their 1645 known victims spanning multiple countries including the United States, France, Canada, United Kingdom, and Germany, with particular focus on manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and business services sectors. Based on available intelligence reporting, Qilin remains an active threat as of recent assessments, continuing their ransomware operations without significant reported law enforcement disruption. The group has been linked to 2,226 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 8, 2022; most recent post August 23, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

August 23, 2026Clear Align listed by Qilinon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Qilin

Qilin has been linked to 2,226 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Qilin dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Professional Services sector, which has 14 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Clear Align is reported in United States, a country with 3,164 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Qilin means Clear Align 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 Qilin'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.