Was Ayuntamiento de Beniel hit by ransomware?

Ayuntamiento de Beniel was listed by the thegentlemen ransomware operation (Spain), 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 thegentlemen ransomware group?

thegentlemen 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 Ayuntamiento de Beniel breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to Ayuntamiento de Beniel. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Ayuntamiento de Beniel

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 5 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJan 20, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: Spain
Sector: Public Sector
Listed on leak site: Jan 20, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Ayuntamiento de Beniel is the municipal government of Beniel, a small town in the Region of Murcia, Spain. It provides public administrative services to the local population, including urban planning, civil registration, and community services. Beniel has a population of approximately 12,000 residents.

Industry: Local Government Administration
Address: Plaza Mayor, 1, 30540 Beniel, Murcia, Spain
Employees: 10-50

Attack summary

Severity: high — A local government entity holding citizen PII and administrative records has reached 'data_published' status, indicating confirmed data exfiltration. Municipal records typically contain regulated personal data of residents, warranting a high severity classification despite the small scale of the organisation.

The group 'thegentlemen' claims to have attacked the Ayuntamiento de Beniel and the disclosed status indicates data has been published; however, the leak post content is inaccessible due to an anti-bot challenge page, preventing confirmation of specific exfiltration or encryption claims.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Municipal administrative records
Citizen personal data (PII)
Local government documents
Employee records

What the group claims

beniel.es Ayuntamiento de Beniel is the local government authority of the town of Beniel, located in the Region of Murcia, Spain.It is responsible for the administration and governance of the municipality. The organization provides public and administrative services to local residents. Its duties include population registration and issuing official certificates and documents. It manages the municipal budget, local taxes, and public spending. The municipality oversees urban planning, infrastructure, and public maintenance. It coordinates social services, cultural initiatives, and sports programs. The local government organizes and supports community events and public celebrations. It publishes official announcements, regulations, and municipal news.

The leak post

captured from the group's site

Gentlecloud Protection 🛡️ Gentlecloud Verifying your browser... Initializing security checks... I'm not a bot

Sources

Victim sitebeniel.es
Leak posthttp://tezwsse5czllksjb7cwp65rvnk4oobmzti2znn42i43bjdfd2prqqkad.onion

Source

Indexed 5 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 thegentlemen

thegentlemen is a ransomware group that emerged in September 2025, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their broad targeting of commercial sectors. The group has documented 267 victims across multiple countries, with primary focus on the United States, Thailand, France, Brazil, and India. Their targeting strategy demonstrates a preference for high-value sectors including manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and financial services organizations. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources such as CISA, FBI, or major security research firms, specific details regarding their country of origin, operational structure, attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and whether they employ ransomware-as-a-service models remain unclear. The relatively high victim count of 267 in a short operational timeframe since September 2025 suggests either an aggressive campaign pace or potential inflation of victim numbers through affiliate operations, though without corroborating intelligence reports, the group's exact operational capabilities and notable campaigns cannot be definitively established. Current intelligence indicates the group remains active as of late 2025, though comprehensive threat profiling requires additional validated reporting from authoritative cybersecurity sources. The group has been linked to 483 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post June 11, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

January 20, 2026Ayuntamiento de Beniel listed by thegentlemenon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 483 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full thegentlemen dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Public Sector sector, which has 260 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Ayuntamiento de Beniel is reported in Spain, a country with 212 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Ayuntamiento de Beniel 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 thegentlemen'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.