Was Confluent hit by ransomware?

Confluent was listed by the thegentlemen ransomware operation (United States), 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 Confluent breach?

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

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Confluent

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 5 hours ago

Today

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedOct 12, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Technology
Listed on leak site: Oct 12, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Confluent is an enterprise data streaming platform built on Apache Kafka that enables real-time processing of live events such as payments, orders, and sensor data. The company operates globally across 27 countries with a pure software/cloud-based model, serving approximately 6,690 customers including ~40% of the Fortune 500. It was acquired by IBM for approximately $11 billion in March 2026.

Industry: Enterprise Data Streaming & Cloud Infrastructure Software
Employees: 3241
Founded: 2014

Attack summary

Severity: low — The post is a listing/announcement with company background information only. No evidence of data exfiltration, encryption, proof files, or operational impact is stated. The disclosure status 'data_published' appears to refer to publication of the leak post itself rather than confirmed data compromise.

The leak post does not describe a specific attack or data exfiltration claim. Instead, it contains detailed company information (revenue, employee count, customer base, acquisition details) presented as background context, with no assertion of encrypted systems, stolen data, or operational disruption.

low

What the group claims

confluent.io Revenue $1.16 Billion Confluent is the enterprise data streaming platform built on Apache Kafka that lets companies process live events like payments, orders and sensor data in real time, and it is now owned by IBM which bought it for about $11 billion in March 2026. It ended 2025 with 6,690 customers including roughly 40% of the Fortune 500 and grew revenue 21% with its cloud segment alone growing 27%. Customers include BMW, L'Oreal, Michelin and Ticketmaster and the platform runs across 60+ cloud regions on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Money comes from cloud usage and software subscriptions, about 96% of revenue, paid for compute and data transfer rather than per-seat fees. Around 3,241 employees worked at Confluent across 27 countries before the IBM deal and it owns no factories or stores because its product is pure software and cloud. Confluent was still unprofitable with a $295 million loss in 2025 though it earned positive operating income excluding stock pay.

Sources

Victim siteconfluent.io
Leak posthttp://tezwsse5czllksjb7cwp65rvnk4oobmzti2znn42i43bjdfd2prqqkad.onion/#Confluent

Source

Indexed 5 hours 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 966 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post October 12, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 12, 2026Confluent listed by thegentlemen on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 966 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 Technology sector, which has 3,581 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Confluent is reported in United States, a country with 3,176 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Confluent 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, CISA (United States), 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.