Was Verzinkerei Rentrop hit by ransomware?

Verzinkerei Rentrop was listed by the thegentlemen 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 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 Verzinkerei Rentrop breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to Verzinkerei Rentrop. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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KT Oberflächentechnik GmbH

listed as Verzinkerei Rentrop · Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 2 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedApr 14, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Apr 14, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

KT Oberflächentechnik GmbH (formerly Verzinkerei Rentrop) is a German industrial company based in Plettenberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, specialising in hot-dip galvanizing, electrogalvanizing, and phosphatizing of steel parts. The company also offers ancillary surface treatments and employs approximately 60 staff. It traces its origins to a galvanizing works founded by Otto Rentrop in 1929, with assets later acquired following an insolvency in 2019.

Industry: Steel Surface Treatment & Hot-Dip Galvanizing
Address: Ebbetalstrasse 26, D-58840 Plettenberg, NRW, Germany
Employees: 60
Founded: 1929

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data has been published by the threat actor, indicating confirmed exfiltration, but no specific sensitive regulated data categories (e.g. large-scale PII, medical, financial) are identified, and the company is a small industrial SME (~60 employees). Without detail on the nature of exfiltrated files, medium is the appropriate rating.

The group 'thegentlemen' claims to have attacked Verzinkerei Rentrop / KT Oberflächentechnik GmbH and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), though no specific ransom amount or data volume has been stated in the post.

medium

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Company business data
Operational/industrial records

What the group claims

verzinkerei-rentrop.de zoominfo.com/c/verzinkerei-rentrop-gmbh/1103509945 Verzinkerei Rentrop GmbH is a German industrial company founded in 1929 in Plettenberg, NRW, specializing in steel surface treatment — primarily hot-dip galvanizing, electrogalvanizing, and phosphatizing. The company also produces steel products such as protective grids, fencing, sheets, and profiles. After filing for insolvency in 2019, its assets were sold to Verzinkerei

Sources

Victim siteverzinkerei-rentrop.de

Source

Indexed 2 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

April 14, 2026Verzinkerei Rentrop 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 Manufacturing sector, which has 2,458 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Verzinkerei Rentrop is reported in Germany, a country with 334 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Verzinkerei Rentrop 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.