Was Air Canada hit by ransomware?

Air Canada was listed by the thegentlemen 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 thegentlemen ransomware group?

thegentlemen 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 Air Canada breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to Air Canada. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Air Canada

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 3 days ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedSep 9, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: Canada
Sector: Transportation
Listed on leak site: Sep 9, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Air Canada is Canada's flag carrier and largest airline, founded in 1937 as Trans-Canada Air Lines. Headquartered in Montréal with approximately 37,000 employees, the airline operates a major network serving 45.3 million passengers annually and is a founding member of Star Alliance. The company is undergoing significant fleet modernization with new aircraft including A321XLRs, 787-10s, and A350-1000s.

Industry: Airlines & Aviation
Address: Montréal, Canada
Employees: 37000
Founded: 1937

Attack summary

Severity: high — Claimed exfiltration of 51,409 critical files from a major airline and essential infrastructure operator. Air Canada is a critical transportation provider; breach of operational or passenger data at this scale poses significant risk even without confirmed details on data type. High-volume file extraction from aviation sector warrants elevated severity.

The threat group claims to have exfiltrated 51,409 critical files from Air Canada. The leak post does not specify the nature or sensitivity of the data compromised, nor does it indicate whether systems were encrypted.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

critical files (unspecified type)
potentially operational/business data

What the group claims

aircanada.com zoominfo.com/c/air-canada/3937344 Revenue $16.5 Billion Air Canada We have taken 51409 critical files! Canada's flag carrier and largest airline — founded in 1937 as Trans-Canada Air Lines, HQ'd in Montréal, ~37,000 employees, 45.3M passengers in 2025, and a founding Star Alliance member. Record revenue: $22.37B CAD in 2025 ($6.27B in Q2 2026 alone, +11%), but a fuel shock (+50.8% per litre) and $388M one-off charges pushed Q2 2026 to a $178M net loss — guidance cut, though load factor (87.5%) and Aeroplan (10M+ members), Cargo (+29%) and Sixth Freedom traffic stay strong. Its moat: the most aggressive fleet renewal in its history — A321XLRs with Canada's first lie-flat seats on a narrowbody, 787-10s and A350-1000s — unlocking "thin" long-haul routes no widebody could fly (Oslo, Shannon, Basel, Dubrovnik, Guangzhou) ahead of Super Bowl 2027 and the LA 2028 Olympics.

Sources

Victim siteaircanada.com

Source

Indexed 3 days 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 thegentlemen

thegentlemen is a ransomware group that emerged in September 2025, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their broad targeting of commercial sectors. The group has documented 267 victims across multiple countries, with primary focus on the United States, Thailand, France, Brazil, and India. Their targeting strategy demonstrates a preference for high-value sectors including manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and financial services organizations. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources such as CISA, FBI, or major security research firms, specific details regarding their country of origin, operational structure, attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and whether they employ ransomware-as-a-service models remain unclear. The relatively high victim count of 267 in a short operational timeframe since September 2025 suggests either an aggressive campaign pace or potential inflation of victim numbers through affiliate operations, though without corroborating intelligence reports, the group's exact operational capabilities and notable campaigns cannot be definitively established. Current intelligence indicates the group remains active as of late 2025, though comprehensive threat profiling requires additional validated reporting from authoritative cybersecurity sources. The group has been linked to 838 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post September 9, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

September 9, 2026Air Canada listed by thegentlemen on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 838 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full thegentlemen dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Transportation sector, which has 47 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Air Canada is reported in Canada, a country with 320 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Air Canada 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, CCCS (Canada), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on thegentlemen'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.