Was Coswell hit by ransomware?

Coswell was listed by the Metaencryptor ransomware operation (Italy), 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 Metaencryptor ransomware group?

Metaencryptor 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 Coswell breach?

Metaencryptor published data attributed to Coswell. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Coswell

Claimed by Metaencryptor · listed 3 years ago

$157M

Ransom

demanded

35m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 16, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Metaencryptor
Status: Data leaked
Country: Italy
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Aug 16, 2023
Ransom demanded: $157M
Estimated revenue: $157M

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Coswell is an Italian family-run group of companies specialising in the manufacturing and distribution of body and oral care products, health foods, masstige and selective fragrances, skin care, and cosmetics. The company serves the mass market as well as perfumeries and pharmacies. It reported revenue of approximately $157 million in 2021.

Industry: Personal Care Products & Cosmetics Manufacturing

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published by the threat actor, confirming exfiltration of significant business data from a mid-sized manufacturing and distribution company; while no regulated medical or government data is explicitly stated, the scale of the operation and confirmed publication elevate this to high severity.

Metaencryptor claims to have compromised Coswell and has published data (disclosed status: data_published); the leak post references $157M as the ransom figure, consistent with the company's reported revenue, and data exfiltration is implied by the published-data status.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Corporate financial records
Business operational data
Employee records
Customer and distribution partner data
Proprietary product formulations or trade data

What the group claims

The Company Coswell is an italian family run group of companies specialized in manufacturing and distribution of body and oral care products, health foods, masstige and selective fragrances, skin care and cosmetics in the mass market, perfumeries and pharmacies. Revenue: $157M Year 2021

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 Metaencryptor

Metaencryptor is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in August 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors and geographical regions. The group appears to be an independent operation rather than a Ransomware-as-a-Service model, though limited public documentation makes definitive attribution challenging regarding their specific country of origin or connections to established cybercriminal networks. Based on their targeting patterns, Metaencryptor demonstrates a preference for manufacturing organizations, business services, and transportation/logistics companies, with their operations concentrated primarily in Western nations including Germany, the United States, Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom. With 31 documented victims since their emergence, the group represents a moderate but persistent threat in the ransomware landscape. However, due to their recent emergence and relatively lower profile compared to major ransomware families, comprehensive technical analysis of their attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and specific initial access vectors has not been extensively documented by major cybersecurity firms or government agencies. The group's current operational status remains active as of available intelligence, though the limited public reporting suggests they operate with a smaller scale and lower visibility than prominent ransomware-as-a-service operations that typically attract more attention from law enforcement and security researchers. The group has been linked to 31 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on August 16, 2023; most recent post June 24, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

August 16, 2023Coswell listed by Metaencryptoron the group's public leak site

Ransom demanded: $157M

Other recent disclosures by Metaencryptor

Metaencryptor has been linked to 31 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Metaencryptor 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, Coswell is reported in Italy, a country with 635 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Metaencryptor means Coswell 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, CSIRT Italia (Italy), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Metaencryptor'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.