Lapsus$ is a financially motivated cybercriminal group that emerged in December 2021, gaining notoriety for their aggressive extortion tactics and high-profile targeting of major corporations and government entities. The group is believed to have originated from South America, particularly Brazil, with suspected ties to young hackers operating independently rather than as a traditional ransomware-as-a-service operation, though they have demonstrated sophisticated coordination and insider recruitment capabilities. Lapsus$ primarily relies on social engineering techniques, SIM swapping, and insider threats to gain initial access to target networks, often recruiting employees through bribes or coercion rather than relying on traditional malware delivery methods, and they frequently employ data theft and public leak tactics for extortion rather than always deploying encryption-based ransomware. The group has conducted notable attacks against major technology companies including Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung, and Okta, as well as targeting organizations across France, the United States, Brazil, Germany, and Canada, with a particular focus on consumer services, education, government facilities, and critical manufacturing sectors, leading to significant law enforcement attention and arrests of suspected members. Following arrests of key members by Brazilian and UK authorities in 2022, the group's activity has significantly diminished, though some security researchers suggest remnants may still be operational under different identities. The group has been linked to 27 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 10, 2021; most recent post June 23, 2026. The operation is currently active.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Financial Services sector, which has 1,183 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, AYA BANK is reported in Myanmar (Burma).
If your organisation is affected
A listing by lapsus$ means AYA BANK 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 lapsus$'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.
