Was Gradient Wind Engineering hit by ransomware?

Gradient Wind Engineering was listed by the Qilin ransomware operation (Canada), 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 Gradient Wind Engineering breach?

Qilin published data attributed to Gradient Wind Engineering. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Gradient Wind Engineering

Claimed by Qilin · listed 4 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedFeb 9, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Qilin
Status: Data leaked
Country: Canada
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Feb 9, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Gradient Wind Engineering is a Canadian engineering consultancy headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that has provided wind, snow, acoustic, noise, and vibration engineering services for approximately 30 years. The firm serves developers, architects, structural engineers, contractors, and urban planners on projects worldwide, offering wind tunnel testing, physical modelling, numerical simulation, damper design and fabrication, air quality studies, thermal analysis, and environmental noise and acoustics assessments. Notable projects include work on the Francis Winspear Centre for Music Expansion and the Vimy Memorial Bridge.

Industry: Wind, Acoustic & Vibration Engineering Consulting
Address: 127 Walgreen Road, Ottawa, Ontario K0A 1L0, Canada
Founded: 1996

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data is marked as published by the group, indicating confirmed exfiltration and public disclosure; however, no specific data categories, file counts, or proof artefacts are described in the available post, and the company handles sensitive engineering data (structural, environmental, acoustic analyses) for large public and private infrastructure projects, which represents meaningful business and potentially sensitive design data.

Qilin has listed Gradient Wind Engineering with a 'data_published' status, indicating that data has been released; however, the leak post excerpt does not specify the volume of files exfiltrated, the nature of the data, or whether encryption was also performed.

medium

What the group claims

N/A

The leak post

captured from the group's site

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Sources

Source

Indexed 4 months 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 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 1,935 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 8, 2022; most recent post June 12, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

February 9, 2026Gradient Wind Engineering listed by Qilinon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Qilin

Qilin has been linked to 1,935 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 Manufacturing sector, which has 2,458 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Gradient Wind Engineering is reported in Canada, a country with 810 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Qilin means Gradient Wind Engineering 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 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.