Was BOB Automotive Group hit by ransomware?

BOB Automotive Group was listed by the Metaencryptor 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 Metaencryptor ransomware group?

Metaencryptor 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 BOB Automotive Group breach?

Metaencryptor published data attributed to BOB Automotive Group. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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BOB Automotive Group

Claimed by Metaencryptor · listed 3 years ago

$240M

Est. revenue

company size proxy

35m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 16, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Metaencryptor
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Automotive
Listed on leak site: Aug 16, 2023
Estimated revenue: $240M

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

BOB Automotive Group is a holding company headquartered in Essen, Germany, operating 20 car dealerships across the Ruhr region, Rhineland, and Bergisches Land, plus one central administrative location. The group offers new and used vehicle sales, leasing, vehicle rental, servicing, and mobility services. It reported revenue of approximately 240 million EUR in 2022.

Industry: Automotive Retail & Dealership Group
Address: Hauptsitz Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Employees: 500-1000

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published (not merely threatened), and the exfiltrated material likely includes employee PII, financial/accounting records, and operational data spanning a 240M EUR revenue automotive group with 20+ locations. The breadth of functions compromised (HR, finance, IT) elevates severity to high.

The Metaencryptor group claims to have compromised BOB Automotive Group and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), with the leak post referencing internal operational details including HR, accounting, controlling, IT, vehicle disposition, and marketing functions. No ransom amount or explicit data volume was stated.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

HR / personnel records
Accounting and financial data
Controlling data
IT infrastructure information
Vehicle disposition records
Marketing data
Administrative records across 21 locations

What the group claims

Die BOB Automotive Group mit Hauptsitz in Essen ist eine Holding für renommierte und starke Automobilunternehmen in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Derzeit ist die BOB-Gruppe mit 20 Autohäusern im Ruhrgebiet, im Rheinland und im Bergischen Land vertreten. 21. Standort ist die Verwaltung, in der die gesamten Querschnittsfunktionen wie zum Beispiel das Personalwesen, Buchhaltung und Controlling, die IT, die Fahrzeugdisposition oder das Marketing gebündelt sind und die administrative Unterstützung für die operativen Standorte leisten. Revenue: 240 M EUR Year 2022

Sources

Source

Indexed 3 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 Metaencryptor

Metaencryptor is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in August 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors and geographical regions. The group appears to be an independent operation rather than a Ransomware-as-a-Service model, though limited public documentation makes definitive attribution challenging regarding their specific country of origin or connections to established cybercriminal networks. Based on their targeting patterns, Metaencryptor demonstrates a preference for manufacturing organizations, business services, and transportation/logistics companies, with their operations concentrated primarily in Western nations including Germany, the United States, Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom. With 31 documented victims since their emergence, the group represents a moderate but persistent threat in the ransomware landscape. However, due to their recent emergence and relatively lower profile compared to major ransomware families, comprehensive technical analysis of their attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and specific initial access vectors has not been extensively documented by major cybersecurity firms or government agencies. The group's current operational status remains active as of available intelligence, though the limited public reporting suggests they operate with a smaller scale and lower visibility than prominent ransomware-as-a-service operations that typically attract more attention from law enforcement and security researchers. The group has been linked to 31 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on August 16, 2023; most recent post June 24, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

August 16, 2023BOB Automotive Group listed by Metaencryptoron the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Metaencryptor

Metaencryptor has been linked to 31 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Metaencryptor dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Automotive sector, which has 101 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, BOB Automotive Group is reported in Germany, a country with 926 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Metaencryptor means BOB Automotive 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, CERT-Bund (Germany), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Metaencryptor'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.