Was Asteco hit by ransomware?

Asteco was listed by the Ransomexx ransomware operation (UAE), 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 Ransomexx ransomware group?

Ransomexx 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 Asteco breach?

Ransomexx published data attributed to Asteco (~11.4 GB). Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Asteco

Claimed by Ransomexx · listed 2 years ago

11.4 GB

Data size

27m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedApr 22, 2024
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Ransomexx
Status: Data leaked
Country: UAE
Sector: Business Services
Listed on leak site: Apr 22, 2024
Data size: 11.4 GB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Asteco is a leading real estate services firm headquartered in Dubai, UAE, with over 40 years of market presence. The company provides property management, valuation, research, investment consultancy, brokerage, and community management services to individual and corporate clients across the region.

Industry: Real Estate Services
Address: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Founded: 1984

Attack summary

Severity: high — Confirmed exfiltration of 11.4 GB from a major regional real estate firm handling sensitive client property, financial, and personal data. Data published by threat actor. Real estate services typically involve PII, financial information, and property details of clients.

Ransomexx claims to have exfiltrated 11.4 GB of data from Asteco. The group has published the data, indicating both encryption and data theft occurred.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

property records
client information
financial documents
valuation reports
transaction data
internal communications

What the group claims

Asteco is a real estate services firm based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with its headquarters in Dubai. It offers a wide range of real estate services including property management, valuation, research, investment consultancy, and sales and leasing brokerage. Asteco has been a prominent player in the UAE’s real estate market for several years, providing services to both individual clients and corporate entities Leaked data size: 11.4GB.

Sources

Victim siteasteco.com
Leak posthttp://rnsm777cdsjrsdlbs4v5qoeppu3px6sb2igmh53jzrx7ipcrbjz5b2ad.onion/./2024/04/17/asteco/index.html

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.

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Disclosure context

About Ransomexx

RansomEXX is a financially motivated ransomware operation that emerged in May 2020, targeting organizations across multiple sectors with a focus on extracting ransom payments through encryption and data theft tactics. The group is believed to operate independently rather than as a Ransomware-as-a-Service model, with suspected ties to Russian-speaking cybercriminals based on code analysis and operational patterns observed by security researchers. RansomEXX operators typically gain initial access through exploiting public-facing applications, particularly targeting vulnerable VPN appliances and remote desktop services, before deploying their custom ransomware payload which uses strong encryption algorithms and is often preceded by data exfiltration to enable double extortion schemes where stolen data is threatened to be publicly released if ransom demands are not met. The group has been responsible for several high-profile attacks including incidents against government entities and major corporations, with documented cases involving ransoms in the millions of dollars, though specific victim details are often kept confidential by affected organizations. Based on recent threat intelligence reporting, RansomEXX continues to maintain active operations as of 2024, with ongoing campaigns targeting the technology and healthcare sectors primarily in the United States and Europe. The group has been linked to 86 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on May 14, 2020; most recent post June 20, 2026. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: Ransom X, Defray777, Defray-777, Defray 2018.

Timeline of this disclosure

April 22, 2024Asteco listed by Ransomexxon the group's public leak site

Data size: 11.4 GB

Other recent disclosures by Ransomexx

Ransomexx has been linked to 86 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Ransomexx 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, Asteco is reported in UAE, a country with 81 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Ransomexx means Asteco 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.
Monitor for the data appearing on Ransomexx'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.