Was Element Food Solutions hit by ransomware?

Element Food Solutions was listed by the Meow 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 Meow ransomware group?

Meow 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 Element Food Solutions breach?

Meow published data attributed to Element Food Solutions. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Element Food Solutions

Claimed by Meow · listed 2 years ago

23m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 13, 2024
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Meow
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Agriculture and Food Production
Listed on leak site: Aug 13, 2024

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Element Food Solutions is a dry blend food ingredient supplier and packaging solutions provider based in Hodgkins, Illinois. They specialize in product development, customized ingredient blends, functional food components, and nutritional solutions for the food and beverage industry, with SQF-certified manufacturing capabilities.

Industry: Food Manufacturing & Ingredient Processing
Address: 7440 Santa Fe Drive, Hodgkins, IL 60525, United States

Attack summary

Severity: low — No proof files, screenshots, or specific data inventory disclosed. Post contains only generic company description with no operational impact or sensitive data exposure claims stated.

The Meow group claims to have accessed Element Food Solutions' systems and published data. No specific details on encryption, exfiltration method, or data types are provided in the available post excerpt.

low

What the group claims

Element Food Solutions is a company specializing in the development and production of high-quality, innovative food ingredients and solutions. They focus on creating value-added products for the food industry, including customized ingredient blends, functional food components, and nutritional solutions. With a commitment to quality and innovation, Element Food Solutions serves a diverse range of clients in the food and beverage sector

Sources

Victim siteelementfoodsolutions.com
Leak posthttp://meow6xanhzfci2gbkn3lmbqq7xjjufskkdfocqdngt3ltvzgqpsg5mid.onion/product/45

Source

Indexed 2 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.

Is this your supplier? Your competitor? You?

Pro plans monitor your domain, corporate emails, and crypto wallets across every new ransomware leak-site post, breach dump and Telegram callout — alerts within 5 minutes.

Disclosure context

About Meow

Meow is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in November 2023, primarily motivated by financial gain through extortion activities targeting organizations across multiple sectors. The group has compromised at least 145 known victims in a short operational timeframe, demonstrating rapid scaling of their criminal enterprise. Based on their targeting patterns, Meow appears to focus heavily on English-speaking countries, with the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada representing their primary victim base, though they have also expanded operations to include targets in Italy and Colombia. The group shows a preference for attacking business services organizations, manufacturing companies, healthcare institutions, and agriculture and food production entities, suggesting they may employ broad-spectrum targeting rather than highly specialized sector focus. Their emergence in late 2023 and the significant victim count achieved in a relatively short period indicates either a sophisticated operation with experienced operators or potential links to existing ransomware ecosystems, though specific details about their attack methodology, initial access vectors, encryption techniques, or data exfiltration practices have not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence sources. Given the recent timeline of their emergence and limited public reporting from established security researchers, detailed technical analysis of their tools, tactics, and procedures remains sparse. The group appears to remain active as of current reporting, though comprehensive law enforcement actions or major disruption efforts have not been publicly documented. The group has been linked to 145 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on November 24, 2023; most recent post November 19, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

August 13, 2024Element Food Solutions listed by Meowon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Meow

Meow has been linked to 145 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Meow 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, Element Food Solutions is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Meow means Element Food Solutions 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 Meow'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.