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Sae-A Trading Co., Ltd.

listed as Sae-a · Claimed by Cuba · listed 4 years ago

43m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedDec 20, 2022
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Cuba
Status
Data leaked
Country
South Korea
Sector
Manufacturing
Listed on leak site
Dec 20, 2022

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Sae-A Trading Co., Ltd. is a South Korea-based vertically integrated apparel manufacturer operating across yarn production, fabric mills, and retail. The company is one of the largest apparel manufacturers in the world, with significant manufacturing operations in Central America (notably Guatemala and Nicaragua) as well as Asia. It supplies major global fashion brands and retailers.

Industry
Vertically Integrated Apparel & Textile Manufacturing
Employees
10000+
Founded
1986

Attack summary

Severity: high — The disclosure status is 'data_published', confirming exfiltration and public release of significant business data from a large multinational manufacturer with thousands of employees across multiple countries.

The Cuba ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated data from Sae-A and has published the data, suggesting both potential encryption and confirmed exfiltration of company information. The specific categories of data at stake have not been fully enumerated in the truncated post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Business financial documents
  • Internal corporate communications
  • Manufacturing and operations data
  • Employee records

What the group claims

From yarn-production through its fabric mills that draw on in new innovation and technology, to retail operations in Korea, SAE-A has become one of the few apparel manufacturers capable of achieving complete vertical-integration of...

Source

Indexed 4 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 Cuba

The Cuba ransomware group is a financially-motivated cybercriminal organization that emerged in February 2021 and has since conducted attacks against at least 105 known victims globally. The group operates as an independent ransomware operation with suspected ties to Russian-speaking cybercriminals, though their exact country of origin remains unconfirmed by law enforcement agencies. Cuba ransomware operators primarily gain initial access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials, exploitation of Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities, and phishing campaigns, subsequently deploying their custom Cuba ransomware payload which encrypts victim files while exfiltrating sensitive data before encryption as part of their double extortion strategy. The group has particularly targeted organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia, and Belgium, with a notable focus on critical infrastructure sectors including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and energy companies. According to FBI reporting, the Cuba ransomware group has demanded ransom payments ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars from their victims. As of recent threat intelligence assessments, the Cuba ransomware group remains active and continues to pose a significant threat to organizations across multiple sectors and geographic regions. The group has been linked to 105 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on February 3, 2021; most recent post February 1, 2024. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: COLDDRAW, Fidel.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • December 20, 2022Sae-a listed by Cubaon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Cuba

Cuba has been linked to 105 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Cuba dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Manufacturing sector, which has 3,681 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Sae-a is reported in South Korea, a country with 48 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Cuba means Sae-a 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, KrCERT/CC (South Korea), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on Cuba'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.