Was Houk Air Conditioning hit by ransomware?

Houk Air Conditioning was listed by the Kairos 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 Kairos ransomware group?

Kairos 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 Houk Air Conditioning breach?

Kairos published data attributed to Houk Air Conditioning. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Houk Air Conditioning

Claimed by Kairos · listed 2 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 6, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Kairos
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Business Services
Listed on leak site: May 6, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Houk Air Conditioning is a family-owned and operated HVAC company headquartered in Texas, serving the DFW, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston metro areas since 1962. The company provides residential and commercial heating, ventilation, and air conditioning repair, installation, maintenance, and emergency services. It operates under the Houk Air Conditioning and Houk Mechanical brands and is known for financing options and a proprietary maintenance program.

Industry: HVAC Repair & Installation Services
Address: Texas, USA (offices in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston); no single street address publicly stated
Founded: 1962

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been marked as published by the threat actor, indicating confirmed exfiltration and public release of company data. As an HVAC company serving both residential and commercial clients, the data likely includes customer PII, contact details, and financial records, constituting significant business and potentially regulated personal data exposure.

The Kairos ransomware group claims to have published data exfiltrated from Houk Air Conditioning, with the disclosed status listed as data_published. No specific ransom amount or data volume was stated in the leak post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Customer records
Business operational data
Employee information
Financial/financing records

What the group claims

Houk AC is a leading HVAC repair and installation service based in Texas, operating in areas such as DFW, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio since 1962. The company offers a variety of services including air conditioning and heating repairs, installations, maintenance, and commercial HVAC solutions. Known for their commitment to customer satisfaction, Houk AC provides special financing options, discounts, and a comprehensive maintenance program to meet the needs of both residential and commercial clients. With a family-owned approach, their dedicated technicians are focused on delivering reliable and energy-efficient solutions to ensure optimal comfort for Texans.

Sources

Victim sitehoukac.com

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 Kairos

Kairos is a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in November 2024 that appears to be primarily financially motivated, having targeted approximately 75 victims across multiple sectors and countries. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain unclear due to limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources, and it is unknown whether they operate as a Ransomware-as-a-Service model or as an independent entity. Based on available targeting data, Kairos appears to focus their operations primarily on English-speaking countries including the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, and Canada, with additional activity observed in Germany, while their sector targeting spans education, healthcare, agriculture and food production, and business services, though specific attack methodologies, initial access vectors, and encryption techniques have not been publicly documented by major security organizations. Given the group's recent emergence in late 2024, there are no widely reported notable campaigns or high-profile incidents documented by CISA, FBI, or established security research firms. As of current reporting, Kairos appears to remain active based on their recent first observation date, though comprehensive threat intelligence profiles from major security organizations have not yet been published due to the group's nascent operational timeline. The group has been linked to 88 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 13, 2024; most recent post June 1, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 6, 2026Houk Air Conditioning listed by Kairoson the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Kairos

Kairos has been linked to 88 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Kairos dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Business Services sector, which has 3,796 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Houk Air Conditioning is reported in United States, a country with 3,115 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Kairos means Houk Air Conditioning 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 Kairos'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.