Was ws-stahl.eu hit by ransomware?

ws-stahl.eu was listed by the lockbit3 ransomware operation (Germany), 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 lockbit3 ransomware group?

lockbit3 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 ws-stahl.eu breach?

lockbit3 published data attributed to ws-stahl.eu. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Westfälische Stahlgesellschaft

listed as ws-stahl.eu · Claimed by Lockbit3 · listed 2 years ago

23m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJul 5, 2024
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Lockbit3
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Jul 5, 2024

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Westfälische Stahlgesellschaft is a German steel manufacturer and trading group founded in 1919, specializing in bright steel, rolled and forged bar steel, and precision steel tubes. Operating from multiple locations including Plettenberg, Löhne, and Stuhr-Brinkum, the company maintains over 60,000 tonnes of inventory and serves global customers with just-in-time delivery.

Industry: Steel Manufacturing & Distribution
Address: Plettenberg, Germany
Founded: 1919

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data has been published by the threat actor, indicating confirmed exfiltration. However, the post lacks specific proof files, screenshots, or detailed inventory of sensitive data types. No regulated data (PII at scale, financial records, medical data) is explicitly mentioned. Severity is elevated from low due to confirmed publication but remains medium pending evidence of sensitive data volume.

LockBit3 claims to have attacked Westfälische Stahlgesellschaft and published data from the incident. The leak post references the company's public website content, indicating data exfiltration, though specific details of encrypted systems or data categories are not elaborated in the truncated post.

medium

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Business information from public website
Potential internal documents
Customer or supplier data (inferred)

What the group claims

Passion for steel. Since 1919 Bright steel. Bar steel. Steel tubes. Pre-processing. Materials expertise. The Westfälische Stahlgesellschaft group of companies comprises trading companies in various regions of Germany and, with the Plettenberg drawi...

Sources

Victim sitews-stahl.eu
Leak posthttp://lockbit3753ekiocyo5epmpy6klmejchjtzddoekjlnt6mu3qh4de2id.onion//post/uOHnpBx18ciqvO3U6685bfee83107

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 lockbit3

LockBit 3.0, also known as LockBit Black, is a prominent ransomware-as-a-service operation that emerged in June 2022 as the third major iteration of the LockBit ransomware family, operating with primarily financial motivations and becoming one of the most prolific ransomware groups globally. The group is believed to operate from Russia or former Soviet states, functioning as a sophisticated RaaS platform that recruits affiliates to conduct attacks while the core group maintains the ransomware infrastructure and negotiates with victims. LockBit 3.0 employs multiple initial access vectors including exploitation of remote desktop protocols, vulnerable VPN appliances, and phishing campaigns, utilizing a fast-encrypting ransomware payload that can complete network-wide encryption in minutes while implementing triple extortion tactics that include data theft, encryption, and threats to leak stolen information on their dedicated leak site called "LockBit Black Blog." The group has claimed responsibility for attacks against thousands of organizations worldwide, with notable victims including major corporations and critical infrastructure entities across their primary target countries of the United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy, focusing heavily on business services, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and government sectors. Despite law enforcement disruptions including Operation Cronos in February 2024 which temporarily seized their infrastructure and websites, LockBit has demonstrated resilience by quickly rebuilding their operations and continuing to recruit new affiliates and victims. The group has been linked to 2,016 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on June 29, 2022; most recent post December 5, 2025. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

July 5, 2024ws-stahl.eu listed by lockbit3on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by lockbit3

lockbit3 has been linked to 2,016 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full lockbit3 dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Manufacturing sector, which has 3,674 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, ws-stahl.eu is reported in Germany, a country with 926 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by lockbit3 means ws-stahl.eu 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 lockbit3'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.