Was vacaero.com hit by ransomware?

vacaero.com was listed by the chaos ransomware operation (Mexico), 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 chaos ransomware group?

chaos 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 vacaero.com breach?

chaos published data attributed to vacaero.com. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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vacaero.com

Claimed by Chaos · listed 2 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 4, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Chaos
Status: Data leaked
Country: Mexico
Sector: Hospitality and Tourism
Listed on leak site: May 4, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

VAC AERO is a Canadian company founded in 1959 that provides vacuum heat treating, thermal and paint coating services, and manufactures vacuum furnace systems and controls. The company serves critical industries including aerospace and defense, medical, nuclear, and industrial sectors, and holds NADCAP Heat Treat Accreditation (Merit Status). It operates globally and counts leading aerospace companies among its customers, including a $7 million commitment from Boeing through the CP-8A Poseidon ITB Program.

Industry: Aerospace & Defense Heat Treatment & Vacuum Furnace Manufacturing
Address: Ville Saint-Laurent, Quebec, Canada (primary facility; additional global facilities referenced)
Founded: 1959

Attack summary

Severity: critical — VAC AERO operates in aerospace, defense, medical, and nuclear sectors and holds sensitive government-adjacent contracts (e.g., Boeing CP-8A Poseidon military program). Exfiltration and publication of 250 GB of internal data from a defense-supply-chain manufacturer likely includes regulated technical, contractual, and potentially ITAR-relevant information, warranting critical severity.

The Chaos ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated approximately 250 GB of VAC AERO's internal data and threatened to publish it within 4 days if no ransom agreement was reached; the disclosed status indicates data has been published.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Internal company data (250 GB)
Potentially aerospace/defense contracts and technical documentation
Potentially customer and supplier records
Potentially financial and operational data

What the group claims

If the company's management does not reach an agreement with us within 4 days, we will publish 250 GB of the company's internal data. Founded in 1959, VAC AERO provides vacuum heat treating and thermal & paint coating services as well as vacuum furnace systems and controls to aerospace and high-tec…

Sources

Victim sitevacaero.com
Leak posthttp://hptqq2o2qjva7lcaaq67w36jihzivkaitkexorauw7b2yul2z6zozpqd.onion/post/h9lRRpRP4HlHCJHCTlsoNji9O37ffzuA

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 chaos

Based on the limited publicly available information, Chaos is a recently emerged ransomware group that was first observed in March 2025, appearing to be financially motivated given their ransom demands and targeting patterns. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain unclear due to their recent emergence, though their operational model and whether they operate as Ransomware-as-a-Service or as an independent entity has not been definitively established by security researchers. Their attack methodology and specific technical capabilities are not yet well-documented in public threat intelligence reports, though their targeting suggests they employ common initial access vectors to compromise victims across multiple sectors. Chaos has claimed 41 victims primarily concentrated in the United States, Germany, Poland, Malaysia, and Sweden, with a particular focus on technology companies, financial services, business services, and manufacturing sectors, though the scope and impact of their most significant attacks have not been widely publicized. The group currently appears to be active based on recent victim claims, though comprehensive analysis from major security firms regarding their long-term operational capabilities and potential law enforcement actions remains limited due to their recent emergence in the threat landscape. The group has been linked to 69 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on March 31, 2025; most recent post July 14, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 4, 2026vacaero.com listed by chaoson the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by chaos

chaos has been linked to 69 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full chaos dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Hospitality and Tourism sector, which has 452 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, vacaero.com is reported in Mexico, a country with 70 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by chaos means vacaero.com 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-MX (Mexico), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on chaos'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.