Was Ace Ethanol hit by ransomware?

Ace Ethanol was listed by the Akira 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 Akira ransomware group?

Akira 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 Ace Ethanol breach?

Akira published data attributed to Ace Ethanol (~15 GB). Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Ace Ethanol

Claimed by Akira · listed 4 months ago

15 GB

Data size

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedFeb 27, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Akira
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Energy
Listed on leak site: Feb 27, 2026
Data size: 15 GB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Ace Ethanol LLC is a marketing and production cooperative serving corn producers in northwestern Wisconsin. The company produces ethanol, dried distillers grains, and corn oil, positioning itself as a contributor to national energy independence while emphasizing operational efficiency and environmental safety.

Industry: Ethanol & Biofuel Production

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration includes regulated PII at scale (SSNs, W-9 tax forms), financial records, and sensitive operational data (chemical recipes); the combination of employee-level regulated data and business-critical industrial information warrants a critical rating.

Akira claims to have exfiltrated approximately 15 GB of corporate data from Ace Ethanol LLC, including employee PII (SSNs, W-9 forms), HR files, financial records, chemical recipes, project specifications, and partner files, with publication described as imminent.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Employee SSNs
W-9 forms
HR files
Financial records
Chemical recipes
Project specifications
Partner files

What the group claims

Ace Ethanol LLC serves as a marketing resource for corn producers in northwestern Wisconsin, focusing on the production of ethanol , dried distillers grains, and corn oil. The company aims to cont ribute to national energy freedom while ensuring improved efficie ncies and environmental safety. We will upload 15gb of corporate data soon. Employee files (SSNs, w9 forms and so on), specifications and projects, chemical recip es, financials, lots of HR files, partner's files, etc.

Source

Indexed 4 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 Akira

Akira is a ransomware group that emerged in April 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and has rapidly established itself as a significant threat actor with over 1,500 documented victims. The group's country of origin remains unclear, though they operate as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, recruiting affiliates to conduct attacks while the core group maintains the ransomware infrastructure and negotiation processes. Akira employs multi-faceted attack methodologies including exploitation of VPN vulnerabilities, particularly targeting Cisco VPN appliances, and utilizes living-off-the-land techniques along with legitimate administrative tools to avoid detection, while implementing double extortion tactics by exfiltrating sensitive data before deploying their encryption payload. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting organizations in the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, and Italy, with a particular focus on manufacturing, business services, technology, and construction sectors, though they have shown willingness to attack various industries. Despite being relatively new to the ransomware landscape, Akira has maintained consistent operations throughout 2023 and into 2024, with law enforcement agencies including CISA and FBI issuing advisories about their activities, though no major disruption operations have been publicly reported against the group as of late 2024. The group has been linked to 1,648 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 26, 2023; most recent post June 12, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: Megazord.

Timeline of this disclosure

February 27, 2026Ace Ethanol listed by Akiraon the group's public leak site

Data size: 15 GB

Other recent disclosures by Akira

Akira has been linked to 1,648 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Akira dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Energy sector, which has 375 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Ace Ethanol is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Akira means Ace Ethanol 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 Akira'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.