Was Ankara-İzmir hit by ransomware?

Ankara-İzmir was listed by the thegentlemen ransomware operation (Turkey), 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 Ankara-İzmir breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to Ankara-İzmir. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Ankara-İzmir Yüksek Hızlı Tren Projesi (AİYHT)

listed as Ankara-İzmir · Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 4 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedFeb 6, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: Turkey
Listed on leak site: Feb 6, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The Ankara-İzmir Yüksek Hızlı Tren Projesi (AİYHT) is a major high-speed railway project under Turkey's Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, General Directorate of Infrastructure Investments. The project involves constructing a 503.3 km high-speed rail line connecting Ankara to İzmir, passing through Eskişehir, Afyonkarahisar, Kütahya, Uşak, Manisa and İzmir provinces. Scope includes track superstructure, electrification, signalisation, and telecommunications works, along with new stations at several cities.

Industry: Railway Infrastructure Construction & Development
Founded: 2021

Attack summary

Severity: high — The target is a major national critical infrastructure project operated under a Turkish government ministry. A disclosed/published data status suggests exfiltration of potentially sensitive project, technical, and government-affiliated documents. Compromise of critical transport infrastructure project data warrants a high severity rating even without confirmed proof count.

The ransomware group 'thegentlemen' claims a disclosed data attack against the AİYHT project entity, with data published status indicated; however, the group's leak post was obscured by an anti-bot verification page, preventing confirmation of specific exfiltration claims or data volumes.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Project documentation
Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) reports
Stakeholder engagement plans
Resettlement policy frameworks
Technical design documents
Contact and communications data

What the group claims

aniyht.com The Ankara-İzmir High-Speed Railway Line Project (AİYHT) is a significant project under the General Directorate of Infrastructure Investments of the Republic of Turkey's Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, which will connect Turkey's capital, Ankara, with İzmir, the country's third most populous city. The 503-kilometer-long high-speed railway line will pass through the provincial boundaries of Ankara, Eskişehir, Afyonkarahisar, Kütahya, Uşak, Manisa, and İzmir.

The leak post

captured from the group's site

Gentlecloud Protection 🛡️ Gentlecloud Verifying your browser... Initializing security checks... I'm not a bot

Sources

Victim siteaniyht.com
Leak posthttp://tezwsse5czllksjb7cwp65rvnk4oobmzti2znn42i43bjdfd2prqqkad.onion

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 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 483 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post June 11, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

February 6, 2026Ankara-İzmir listed by thegentlemenon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 483 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full thegentlemen dossier →

Sector and geography

Geographically, Ankara-İzmir is reported in Turkey, a country with 7 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Ankara-İzmir 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 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.