Was ASCII Group hit by ransomware?

ASCII Group was listed by the Qilin ransomware operation (Japan), 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 Qilin ransomware group?

Qilin 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 ASCII Group breach?

Qilin published data attributed to ASCII Group. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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ASCII Group

Claimed by Qilin · listed 2 days ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 16, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Qilin
Status: Data leaked
Country: Japan
Sector: Technology
Listed on leak site: Aug 16, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

ASCII Group is an IT staffing and talent recruitment firm providing permanent IT professionals, contract staffing, managed services, and specialized staffing solutions. They offer services including IT talent recruitment, network services, project management consulting, and staff augmentation for businesses requiring IT personnel and digital transformation support.

Industry: IT Staffing & Recruitment Services

Attack summary

Severity: low — Only listing/announcement with no leak post details, no proof files documented, no confirmed data exfiltration details, and no operational impact stated. The disclosure status indicates data_published but without the actual post content or proof inventory, confidence in the threat is minimal.

Qilin group listed ASCII Group on their leak site with disclosed status indicating data publication, though the specific leak post content is not provided and no details on the nature of the attack (encryption, exfiltration, or both) are available.

low

What the group claims

N/A

Sources

Source

Indexed 2 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 Qilin

Qilin is a ransomware group that emerged in October 2022, operating with primarily financial motivations through targeted attacks against organizations across multiple sectors. The group appears to operate independently with limited public information available regarding their specific country of origin or affiliations to other ransomware families. Qilin employs double extortion tactics, typically exfiltrating sensitive data before deploying their encryption payload, though specific details about their initial access vectors and technical tools remain less documented in public security research. The group has demonstrated a broad targeting approach, with their 1645 known victims spanning multiple countries including the United States, France, Canada, United Kingdom, and Germany, with particular focus on manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and business services sectors. Based on available intelligence reporting, Qilin remains an active threat as of recent assessments, continuing their ransomware operations without significant reported law enforcement disruption. The group has been linked to 2,195 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 8, 2022; most recent post August 17, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

August 16, 2026ASCII Group listed by Qilinon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Qilin

Qilin has been linked to 2,195 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Qilin dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Technology sector, which has 3,572 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, ASCII Group is reported in Japan, a country with 89 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Qilin means ASCII Group 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, JPCERT/CC (Japan), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Qilin'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.