Was Schaltbau hit by ransomware?

Schaltbau was listed by the Akira 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 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 Schaltbau breach?

Akira published data attributed to Schaltbau (~20 GB). Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Schaltbau

Claimed by Akira · listed 3 months ago

20 GB

Data size

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 5, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Akira
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Mar 5, 2026
Data size: 20 GB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Schaltbau is a German manufacturer of electromechanical components and driver's desks for railway and industrial applications, founded in 1929. The company supplies safety-critical systems for rail services and also serves markets in renewable energy, e-mobility, and industrial automation. It is a well-established mid-to-large industrial group headquartered in Germany.

Industry: Electromechanical Components & Railway Systems Manufacturing
Employees: 1001-5000
Founded: 1929

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The exfiltration includes regulated PII (passport scans, personal identity documents) at scale alongside sensitive commercial and technical data from a safety-critical railway and industrial infrastructure supplier; 20 GB of data has been announced for imminent publication.

Akira claims to have exfiltrated approximately 20 GB of corporate data from Schaltbau, with planned publication imminent. The stolen data reportedly includes employee passport scans and personal documents, project files, specifications, contracts, internal confidential files, and client documentation.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Employee passport scans
Personal identity documents
Project files
Technical specifications
Contracts
Internal confidential files
Client documents

What the group claims

Schaltbau develops and manufactures electromechanical components and innovative driver's desks for railways and industry. Since 19 29, the company has been responsible for the safe operation of ra il services, and today the company protect systems in industrial applications for renewable energy, e-mobility, and automation. We will upload 20gb of corporate data soon. Employee passports an d other personal docs scans, lots of projects, specifications, co ntracts, internal confidential files, clients docs and so on.

Source

Indexed 3 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

March 5, 2026Schaltbau listed by Akiraon the group's public leak site

Data size: 20 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 Manufacturing sector, which has 2,458 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Schaltbau is reported in Germany, a country with 695 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Akira means Schaltbau 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.