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HELMA Eigenheimbau AG

Claimed by Royal · listed 4 years ago

$352M
Ransom
demanded
43m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedDec 27, 2022
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Royal
Status
Data leaked
Country
Germany
Sector
Construction
Listed on leak site
Dec 27, 2022
Ransom demanded
$352M
Estimated revenue
$352M

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

HELMA Eigenheimbau AG is a Germany-based publicly listed company (stock symbol H5E) headquartered in Lehrte, Lower Saxony, specialising in the design and construction of private residential buildings. Its operations span three segments: building services (planning and construction of detached and semi-detached houses on customer order), property development (construction and marketing of homes on company-owned land), and other services including brokerage of building-related financing and insurance. The company also operates subsidiaries including HELMA Wohnungsbau GmbH and HELMA Ferienimmobilien GmbH.

Industry
Residential Construction & Property Development
Address
4 Zum Meersefeld, Aligse, Lehrte, Lower Saxony, 31275, Germany

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published (not merely threatened), indicating confirmed exfiltration of significant business data from a publicly listed construction and property development company. Customer PII and financial records are likely involved given the company's consumer-facing residential construction business, though no explicit regulated medical or government data is indicated.

The Royal ransomware group claims to have conducted an attack on HELMA Eigenheimbau AG and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), with the ransom demand reportedly corresponding to the company's stated revenue of $352M. The post does not specify the volume of exfiltrated data but indicates data has been released.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Corporate financial records
  • Customer personal data
  • Construction project documentation
  • Employee records
  • Subsidiary company data
  • Building financing and insurance brokerage records

What the group claims

HELMA Eigenheimbau AGHeadquarters: 4 Zum Meersefeld, Lehrte, Lower Saxony, 31275, GermanyPhone Number: +49 49513288500Website: www.helma.deRevenue: $352MStock Symbol: H5EHELMA Eigenheimbau AG is a Germany-based company that specializes in design and construction of new private residential buildings and houses. The Company diversifies its activities into three business segments: building services business; property development business, and Other. The main area of operations of the building services business encompasses the planning and construction management of detached and semi-detached houses on the basis of customer orders. In the property development business, constructions are realized and marketed on the Company's own land. The Other business segment comprises the broking business for building-related financing and insurance. As of December 31, 2011, the Company had three wholly-owned subsidiaries: Hausbau Finanz GmbH, HELMA LUX SA, and HELMA Ferienimmobilien GmbH. It also held a 93.95-stake in HELMA Wohnungsbau GmbH.

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 27, 2022HELMA Eigenheimbau AG listed by Royalon the group's public leak site
Ransom demanded
$352M

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 Construction sector, which has 988 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, HELMA Eigenheimbau AG is reported in Germany, a country with 926 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Royal means HELMA Eigenheimbau AG 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-Bund (Germany), 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.