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Kochs GmbH

Claimed by Aurora · listed 12 days ago

11d
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedJun 22, 2026
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Aurora
Status
Data leaked
Country
Germany
Sector
Manufacturing
Listed on leak site
Jun 22, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Kochs GmbH is a family-owned German manufacturer specializing in windows, doors, and aluminium façade systems. Headquartered in Herzogenrath, North Rhine-Westphalia, the company operates across Germany, the Netherlands, and Hungary with approximately 240 employees.

Industry
Building Materials & Façade Systems Manufacturing
Address
Herzogenrath, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Employees
240

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration of GDPR special category health data (Art. 9), large-scale PII (payroll, tax IDs, social insurance numbers, medical records), privileged communications, and critical infrastructure credentials (Active Directory, VPN, SSL/TLS keys) enabling domain impersonation and further compromise.

The Aurora group claims to have exfiltrated 22 GB of payroll databases with employee personal and financial data, DATEV records, Active Directory credentials, proprietary ERP and CRM source code with hardcoded credentials, SSL/TLS private keys, VPN configuration files, medical imaging of a Managing Director, employee disciplinary and identity documents, and complete financial records spanning 2024.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Payroll database backups (MSSQL, 2016–2023)
  • DATEV payroll records (through May 2026)
  • Active Directory passwords (plaintext)
  • Proprietary application source code (WinPro ERP, Apertum CRM, MES)
  • Hardcoded database credentials
  • SSL/TLS private keys (2021–2026)
  • VPN pre-shared keys (LANCOM gateway)
  • Managing Director's medical imaging (MRI/X-ray)
  • Employee disciplinary records
  • Driver's license scans
  • Attorney-client privileged litigation files
  • Financial records (2024 annual accounts, P&L, balance sheets)
  • General ledger and cost accounting

What the group claims

[manufacturer] *** — a family-owned German manufacturer of windows, doors, and aluminium façade systems headquartered in Herzogenrath, Nordrhein-Westfalen, with ~240 employees across Germany, the Netherlands, and Hungary. The exposed material includes: 22 GB of payroll database backups (7 MSSQL .bak files, 2016–2023) — every employee's salary, bank IBAN, tax class, social insurance number, pension contributions, and wage garnishments. 2.3 GB of DATEV payroll records (through May 2026) — individual named salary documents, garnishment data, company car records for all three entities. 7 Active Directory passwords in plaintext batch scripts — including both Managing Directors, with one MD's credentials spanning three separate AD domains. 28+ proprietary application source code repositories — WinPro ERP, Apertum CRM, MES integrations, production viewers, time-tracking, and rack-management systems. Each one hardcodes its database credentials. SSL/TLS private keys for kochs.de (2021–2026) — enabling domain impersonation and man-in-the-middle attacks. 77 VPN pre-shared keys from the LANCOM gateway configuration — the complete remote-access roster since 2018. Managing Director's MRI and X-ray scans — brain and spine medical imaging, GDPR Art. 9 special category health data. 16 named employee disciplinary records, 11 driver's license scans, attorney-client privileged litigation files from two active employment lawsuits. Complete financial records — 2024 annual accounts, P&L, balance sheets, SFirm banking database, Syska ProFI general ledger, cost accounting through December 2024.

Sources

Source

Indexed 12 days 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

  • June 22, 2026Kochs GmbH 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 Manufacturing sector, which has 3,678 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Kochs GmbH is reported in Germany, a country with 378 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by aurora means Kochs GmbH 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, CERT-Bund (Germany), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • 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.