Was Metro hit by ransomware?

Metro 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 Metro breach?

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

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro)

listed as Metro · Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 5 days ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedSep 7, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Retail & E-Commerce
Listed on leak site: Sep 7, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

LA Metro (LACMTA) is the second-busiest public transit system in the United States, serving 9.6 million residents across Los Angeles County. It operates 125+ miles of rail (2 subway + 4 light-rail lines with 110 stations), 117 bus lines, 2 BRT corridors, 2,000+ low-emission buses, and Metro Micro on-demand service, moving approximately 925,000 weekday boardings.

Industry: Public Transportation & Transit Authority
Address: Metro Headquarters Building, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Founded: 1993

Attack summary

Severity: low — No confirmed exfiltration of sensitive data is stated. The post appears to be an announcement listing with public information about LA Metro's operations, organizational structure, and budget figures already available on the agency's public website and news sources. No proof files, screenshots, or specific data breach claims are advertised.

The leak post claims access to LA Metro systems and references the organization's public domain (metro.net) and ZoomInfo profile. No specific exfiltration or encryption claims are detailed in the excerpt; the post primarily contains publicly available information about the agency's operations, budget ($9.7B FY2026-27), and capital program ($26B).

low

What the group claims

metro.net zoominfo.com/c/metro/351518795 LA Metro is the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA) — the second-busiest transit system in the US, serving 9.6M residents across 1,433 sq miles (nearly a third of California's population), founded in 1993 by merging SCRTD and LACTC. Its network: 125+ miles of rail (2 subway + 4 light-rail lines, 110 stations), 117 bus lines, 2 BRT corridors, 2,000+ low-emission buses and the Metro Micro on-demand service — moving ~925,000 weekday boardings and 305.7M riders in 2025 (9 straight months of growth, +9% YoY, 87% satisfaction). It's run by a 13-member board (5 county supervisors + the LA mayor's bloc, chaired politically by Mayor Karen Bass) and led by CEO Stephanie Wiggins — the first woman and first African American to head the agency — with a $9.7B FY2026-27 budget and a $26B capital program, the largest rail construction program in the US.

Sources

Victim sitemetro.net

Source

Indexed 5 days 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 838 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post September 9, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

September 7, 2026Metro listed by thegentlemen on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 838 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 Retail & E-Commerce sector, which has 21 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Metro is reported in Germany, a country with 393 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Metro 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 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.