Was University of Mannheim hit by ransomware?

University of Mannheim was listed by the Qilin ransomware operation (Germany), 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 University of Mannheim breach?

Qilin published data attributed to University of Mannheim. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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University of Mannheim

Claimed by Qilin · listed 4 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedFeb 18, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Qilin
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Feb 18, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The University of Mannheim (Universität Mannheim) is a public research university located in the Mannheim Palace in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It offers programmes across law, economics, business administration, social sciences, humanities, and information systems, and is regarded as one of Germany's leading universities for business and economics. The university serves thousands of students and operates multiple faculties and research centres.

Industry: Higher Education
Address: Schloss, 68131 Mannheim, Germany
Employees: 1001-5000
Founded: 1907

Attack summary

Severity: high — A university holds significant volumes of regulated personal data (student PII, staff records, research data, financial information). The disclosed status is 'data_published', indicating confirmed exfiltration and public release of data, warranting a high severity rating. Critical would require clearer evidence of medical or government-classified data at scale.

Qilin claims to have compromised the University of Mannheim and lists the victim under 'data_published' status, indicating exfiltrated data has been released; however, the truncated leak post does not specify the volume or categories of data published for this particular victim.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

University administrative records
Student personal data
Staff/faculty data
Research data
Financial records

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 18, 2026University of Mannheim 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 Education sector, which has 694 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, University of Mannheim is reported in Germany, a country with 695 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Qilin means University of Mannheim 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.