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Startec Group of Companies

Claimed by Aurora · listed 2 months ago

2m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedMay 12, 2026
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Aurora
Status
Data leaked
Country
Philippines
Sector
Business Services
Listed on leak site
May 12, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Startec Group of Companies is a privately held Calgary-based industrial original equipment manufacturer founded in 1976 by Joe Cawthorn. The company designs, fabricates, installs, and services compression, process, and refrigeration systems for oil-and-gas operators and the energy-transition sector, including RNG, hydrogen, CO2 sequestration, and flare-gas capture. It employs approximately 270 people and exports roughly 80% of its output to US customers including Pembina, ARC Resources, SemCAMS, Cenovus, and Shell.

Industry
Industrial OEM — Oil & Gas Compression, Process & Refrigeration Systems
Address
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Employees
270
Founded
1976

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The disclosed data includes regulated PII at scale (SINs, banking/EFT data, passport scans for 600+ individuals), privileged legal communications, cryptographic private keys enabling infrastructure compromise, family financial records, and sensitive customer engineering IP — representing a near-total corporate and personal data breach across multiple regulated categories.

The Aurora ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated a broad corpus of highly sensitive corporate data from Startec Group of Companies, with data now published. The exposed material allegedly includes 25 years of payroll records with SIN data for 600+ employees, passport scans, TLS and CA private keys, cyber-insurance documents, privileged litigation files, board-level financial records including family trust and QuickBooks data, customer engineering libraries, Outlook PST mailboxes, and physical security credentials.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • 25 years of payroll records (2001–2026)
  • SIN verification register (~600+ employees)
  • ADP payroll exports
  • T4/ROE/T2200 tax forms
  • Banking and EFT direct-deposit data
  • 18+ named passport scans
  • Pakistan applicant passport and resume pool (~20+)
  • Wildcard TLS private keys for *.startec.ca
  • Internal Active Directory CA private key
  • Cyber-insurance policy (BZA2151)
  • Statement of Values and Business Interruption submission to Zurich
  • 25+ customer engineering libraries (process specs, as-built drawings, sizing calculations)
  • Shell Caroline and Shell Saturn privileged litigation files (~665 MB)
  • 12 fiscal years of board packs including in-camera sessions
  • 2020 Valuation Report
  • Family-trust T3 tax returns
  • Succession-planning documents
  • Cawthorn family QuickBooks files (.QBW)
  • 11 Outlook PST mailboxes
  • Physical security access codes (CCTV, alarm, door keys)

What the group claims

Startec Group of Companies, a privately held Calgary-based industrial OEM founded in 1976 by Joe Cawthorn. Startec designs, fabricates, installs, and services compression, process, and refrigeration systems for oil-and-gas operators and the energy-transition sector (RNG, hydrogen, CO&sub2; sequestration, flare-gas capture). The company employs ~270 people and exports ~80% of its cleantech output to US customers including Pembina, ARC Resources, SemCAMS, Cenovus, and Shell. The exposed material spans the entire corporate knowledge base: 25 years of payroll (2001–2026) including a master SIN VERIFICATION.xlsx register, ADP exports, T4/ROE/T2200 forms, banking/EFT direct-deposit data for ~600+ current and former employees 18+ named passport scans plus a Pakistan resume-and-passport applicant pool (~20+) Wildcard TLS private keys for *.startec.ca (2022–2027 series) and the suspected Active-Directory-integrated internal CA private key The cyber-insurance policy (BZA2151) and the Nov 2025 Statement of Values & Business-Interruption submission to Zurich ~25+ named customer engineering libraries (Pembina, ARC, SemCAMS, Cenovus, Shell Scotford) with process specs, as-built drawings, and sizing calculations Shell Caroline + Shell Saturn dispute-counsel files (~665 MB of privileged litigation material) 12 fiscal years of board packs including “in camera” sessions, the 2020 Valuation Report, family-trust T3 returns, and succession-planning documents Cawthorn family QuickBooks files (live .QBW — full chart of accounts, general ledger, every transaction) 11 Outlook PST mailboxes (several multi-GB — named ex-employees' complete email history) Physical-security access codes (CCTV passwords, Telsco alarm chart, all-doors key record)

Sources

Source

Indexed 2 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 aurora

Aurora is a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in April 2026, operating with apparent financial motivations through targeted attacks across multiple sectors. Given its recent emergence, limited public documentation exists regarding the group's specific country of origin or affiliations with established ransomware operations, though its targeting patterns suggest a professional operation potentially operating as an independent entity rather than a known Ransomware-as-a-Service model. The group has demonstrated a preference for attacking business-critical sectors including business services, consumer services, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services, with documented attacks spanning the United States, Canada, the Maldives, and Great Britain, though specific initial access vectors and technical methodologies remain undocumented by major threat intelligence firms. With only seven known victims documented since April 2026, Aurora represents a relatively small-scale operation compared to established ransomware families, though its cross-sector targeting approach and international victim scope indicate deliberate selection criteria rather than opportunistic attacks. The group remains active as of current reporting, though the limited victim count and recent emergence suggest either a highly selective targeting approach or a nascent operation still developing its operational capabilities. The group has been linked to 21 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 29, 2026; most recent post June 30, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • May 12, 2026Startec Group of Companies listed by auroraon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by aurora

aurora has been linked to 21 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full aurora dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Business Services sector, which has 3,796 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Startec Group of Companies is reported in Philippines, a country with 11 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by aurora means Startec Group of Companies 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 aurora'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.