Was Red Barrels hit by ransomware?

Red Barrels was listed by the Nitrogen ransomware operation (Canada), 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 Nitrogen ransomware group?

Nitrogen 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 Red Barrels breach?

Nitrogen published data attributed to Red Barrels. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Red Barrels

Claimed by Nitrogen · listed 2 years ago

22m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedOct 3, 2024
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Nitrogen
Status: Data leaked
Country: Canada
Sector: Technology
Listed on leak site: Oct 3, 2024

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Red Barrels is a Canadian indie video game developer founded in 2011 by former Ubisoft and EA developers. Based in Montreal, the studio is best known for the Outlast horror franchise, which has reached over 15 million players worldwide. The company develops games and related comic book content.

Industry: Video Game Development
Address: Montreal, Canada
Founded: 2011

Attack summary

Severity: low — Post contains no evidence of actual data exfiltration, encryption, operational disruption, or proof files. The leak post recycles public information from the company website and founding history.

The Nitrogen group claims to have breached Red Barrels but the provided leak post contains only publicly available biographical information about the company with no disclosure of exfiltrated data, encrypted systems, or ransom demands.

low

What the group claims

Red Barrels Inc. is a Canadian video game developer based in Montreal. The company was founded by Philippe Morin, David Chateauneuf and Hugo Dallaire in 2011. The three were previously developers for Ubisoft Montreal and EA Montreal, but founded the company after the origination of an original intellectual property by Dallaire in 2010. After leaving their respective workplaces, the team's online presence began in July 2012 and a trailer for the game that became Outlast.

Screenshot of the leak post

Sources

Victim siteredbarrelsgames.com
Leak posthttp://nitrogenczslprh3xyw6lh5xyjvmsz7ciljoqxxknd7uymkfetfhgvqd.onion/posts/66fd8c69ff0c6b1c4d5e739c

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 Nitrogen

**Nitrogen** is an emerging ransomware group that first appeared in September 2024, operating with apparent financial motivations through targeted extortion campaigns primarily focused on North American and European organizations. The group has claimed responsibility for attacks against 46 documented victims across multiple sectors, with manufacturing companies representing their most frequent targets. Limited public information suggests the group operates independently rather than as a Ransomware-as-a-Service model, though their specific country of origin and potential affiliations with other cybercriminal organizations remain undetermined by major security research firms. Their attack methodology appears to focus on opportunistic targeting across diverse industries including manufacturing, business services, technology, and hospitality sectors, with the United States serving as their primary area of operations followed by significant activity in Canada, Portugal, India, and France. Due to the group's recent emergence and relatively low profile compared to established ransomware families, detailed technical analysis of their encryption methods, data exfiltration practices, and initial access vectors has not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence providers such as CISA, FBI, or Mandiant. Given the group's recent formation in September 2024, no major high-profile campaigns or significant law enforcement actions have been publicly reported, with their victim portfolio consisting primarily of small to medium-sized enterprises rather than critical infrastructure or Fortune 500 companies. Nitrogen appears to remain active as of current reporting, though their limited operational history and relatively small victim count suggest they are still establishing their presence within the broader ransomware ecosystem. The group has been linked to 57 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 30, 2024; most recent post June 3, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 3, 2024Red Barrels listed by Nitrogenon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Nitrogen

Nitrogen has been linked to 57 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Nitrogen dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Technology sector, which has 3,563 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Red Barrels is reported in Canada, a country with 1,055 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Nitrogen means Red Barrels 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, CCCS (Canada), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Nitrogen'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.