Was Heartland Growers hit by ransomware?

Heartland Growers was listed by the Dragonforce 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 Dragonforce ransomware group?

Dragonforce 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 Heartland Growers breach?

Dragonforce published data attributed to Heartland Growers. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Heartland Growers

Claimed by Dragonforce · listed 2 months ago

52d

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 24, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Dragonforce
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Agriculture and Food Production
Listed on leak site: May 24, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Heartland Growers is a full-service wholesale greenhouse in Westfield, Indiana, owned and operated by the Gapinski Family since 1984. The company operates a modern, capital-intensive facility covering over 30 acres and supplies wholesale plants (bedding plants, geraniums, lilies, hanging baskets, mums, poinsettias) to independent garden centers, florists, landscapers, and national chain stores throughout the Midwest.

Industry: Wholesale Greenhouse & Nursery
Address: 2621 E 186th St. Westfield, IN 46074
Founded: 1984

Attack summary

Severity: low — No proof files, screenshots, or detailed data inventory published; no operational impact stated; no confirmation of data exfiltration or encryption; listing only.

The dragonforce group claims to have attacked Heartland Growers. The leak post provides no details of the attack method (encryption vs. exfiltration), specific data targeted, or proof of compromise.

low

What the group claims

Heartland Growers is a full-service wholesale greenhouse located in Westfield, Indiana, owned and operated by the Gapinski Family since 1984. The company supplies wholesale plants to independent garden centers, florists, landscapers, and national chain stores throughout the Midwest. With a modern and capital-intensive facility covering over 30 acres, Heartland Growers produces a variety of plants including bedding plants, geraniums, lilies, and hanging baskets. The company is committed to maintaining quality and service as top priorities for its customers

Sources

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 Dragonforce

Dragonforce is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in December 2023, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their targeting patterns and victim selection. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain unclear due to limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources, though their rapid accumulation of 439 documented victims suggests either sophisticated capabilities or possible connections to existing ransomware infrastructure. Based on their targeting patterns across diverse sectors including manufacturing, business services, technology, and construction, Dragonforce appears to employ opportunistic attack methodologies, though specific initial access vectors, encryption methods, and extortion tactics have not been publicly detailed by major security firms or law enforcement agencies. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting organizations primarily in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Italy representing their most frequent victim locations, suggesting possible language capabilities or geographic operational preferences. As of current reporting, Dragonforce appears to remain active given their recent emergence and ongoing victim acquisition, though the lack of detailed public analysis from major threat intelligence organizations indicates either operational security measures that have limited researcher visibility or that the group has not yet conducted sufficiently high-profile attacks to warrant extensive public documentation by CISA, FBI, or established security research firms. The group has been linked to 631 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 13, 2023; most recent post July 15, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: DRAGON FORCE.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 24, 2026Heartland Growers listed by Dragonforceon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Dragonforce

Dragonforce has been linked to 631 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Dragonforce dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Agriculture and Food Production sector, which has 772 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Heartland Growers is reported in United States, a country with 3,115 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Dragonforce means Heartland Growers 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 Dragonforce'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.