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Aegea Group companies

Claimed by Royal · listed 4 years ago

43m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedDec 23, 2022
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Royal
Status
Data leaked
Country
Brazil
Sector
Energy & Utilities
Listed on leak site
Dec 23, 2022

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Aegea Group is one of Brazil's largest private sanitation companies, founded in 2010 and headquartered in Brazil. It serves more than 21 million people across 154 cities through water supply, sewage collection and treatment, operating via concessions, sub-concessions, and public-private partnerships. The company reported an EBITDA of approximately R$3 billion and operates across all regions and biomes of Brazil.

Industry
Water & Sanitation Utilities
Founded
2010

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Aegea is critical infrastructure (water and sanitation) serving over 21 million people across Brazil; data published by the threat actor likely includes regulated PII at scale, financial data, and sensitive operational information for essential public utilities, meeting the threshold for critical severity.

The Royal ransomware group claims to have attacked Aegea Group companies and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), indicating exfiltration of company data; the leak post does not specify the volume of data or whether encryption occurred.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Corporate/internal business data
  • Potentially customer/resident PII (21+ million served)
  • Concession and PPP contract documents
  • Environmental and operational records
  • Financial records

What the group claims

Founded in 2010, Aegea is one of Brazil’s largest private sanitation companies. In each town it operates, it takes more health and quality of life to the population, always respecting the environment and local culture. Today, more than 21 million people are served in 154 cities across Brazil.Aegea manages sanitation assets through full or partial common concessions, sub-concessions and public-private partnerships (PPPs) and manages public concessions in the entire water cycle, i.e., supply, collection and treatment of sewage according to the profile and needs of each town.

Sources

Source

Indexed 4 years 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 Royal

Royal is a financially motivated ransomware group that emerged in November 2022, quickly establishing itself as a significant threat with over 200 documented victims across multiple sectors. The group is believed to operate independently rather than as a ransomware-as-a-service model, though their exact country of origin remains unclear based on publicly available intelligence. Royal primarily gains initial access through phishing campaigns and exploitation of remote desktop protocols, subsequently deploying custom ransomware that encrypts victim files while exfiltrating sensitive data for double extortion tactics. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting critical infrastructure and public services, with notable attacks against educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and government entities primarily in the United States, though they have also significantly impacted organizations across Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France. Their encryption methodology involves custom-built malware that systematically encrypts files while maintaining persistence on compromised networks. As of recent reporting from federal agencies including CISA and FBI advisories, Royal remains an active threat with ongoing campaigns targeting organizations across their preferred sectors, particularly focusing on entities with limited cybersecurity resources that may be more likely to pay ransom demands. The group has been linked to 211 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 4, 2022; most recent post July 19, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • December 23, 2022Aegea Group companies listed by Royalon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Royal

Royal has been linked to 211 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Royal dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Energy & Utilities sector, which has 163 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Aegea Group companies is reported in Brazil, a country with 404 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Royal means Aegea Group companies 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.br (Brazil), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on Royal'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.