Was Aware hit by ransomware?

Aware 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 Aware breach?

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

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Aware

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 2 hours ago

Today

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedOct 3, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Technology
Listed on leak site: Oct 3, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ: AWRE) is a US biometrics software company founded in 1986 that pioneered fingerprint standards for the FBI. It provides identity verification and multi-modal biometric (face, fingerprint, iris, voice, palm) software to approximately 80 government agencies and hundreds of commercial customers worldwide, with a recently launched SaaS platform called Awareness Platform™ for biometric orchestration and liveness detection.

Industry: Biometric Software & Identity Verification
Address: Burlington, MA, USA
Founded: 1986

Attack summary

Severity: high — Confirmed exfiltration of 400 GB from a company handling sensitive biometric data for 80+ government agencies and commercial customers. Even without specific data inventory detailed in the post, the scale and the company's role in government identity systems and fraud prevention represent significant business and operational risk. Data published status indicates proof has been shared.

The threat actor claims to have exfiltrated 400 GB of data from Aware, Inc. The post does not specify what data categories were compromised or detail the nature of the breach.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Unspecified company data (400 GB total)

What the group claims

aware.com zoominfo.com/c/aware-inc/6522832 400 GB Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ: AWRE, founded 1986, Burlington, MA) is the pioneering US biometrics software company — it helped the FBI set the WSQ fingerprint standard in 1993 and went public in 1996 — now selling identity verification and multi-modal biometric (face, fingerprint, iris, voice, palm) software to ~80 government agencies and hundreds of commercial customers worldwide. Its flagship Awareness Platform™ (launched 2025) is a SaaS "control plane" orchestrating biometric workflows, liveness detection (anti-deepfake/injection) and matching across multiple vendors, validated by top-tier tests: zero successful attacks in DHS RIVR Track 3, ISO/IEC 30107-3 Level 1–3 certification, NIST FATE and FIDO2. Since February 2025 the company has been led by CEO Ajay Amlani (co-founder of CLEAR, ex-DHS/IDEMIA), driving a pivot from a fragmented product portfolio to the platform — including a workforce reduction and a plan to cut opex by $4M/year.

Sources

Victim siteaware.com

Source

Indexed 2 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 922 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post October 3, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 3, 2026Aware listed by thegentlemen on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 922 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 3,579 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Aware is reported in United States, a country with 3,167 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Aware 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.