Was Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH hit by ransomware?

Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH was listed by the aurora 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 aurora ransomware group?

aurora 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 Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH breach?

aurora published data attributed to Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH

Claimed by Aurora · listed 11 days ago

11d

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJun 22, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Aurora
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Jun 22, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH is an Austrian space-materials research and development company headquartered in Wiener Neustadt with established relationships to the European Space Agency. The company specializes in polymer composites formulations and thermal vacuum testing for space-grade materials.

Industry: Aerospace & Advanced Materials R&D
Address: Wiener Neustadt, Austria
Employees: 51-200

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration of large-scale regulated and highly sensitive data: PII (passports, SSN, HR files), 30+ years of proprietary space-materials R&D data (core competitive advantage and ESA intellectual property), complete financial records, IT credentials enabling further compromise, and 137 partner NDAs including defence/aerospace contractors. High reputational and operational risk to critical supply chain.

The aurora group claims to have exfiltrated two complete NAS snapshots totaling 209 GB spanning 30+ years of operations, plus accounting databases and system credentials. The disclosure includes proprietary ESA thermal vacuum test archives, financial records, employee PII, and IT credentials.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

ESA thermal vacuum test archive (30+ years)
Polymer composites formulations
22 Outlook PST email backups
Managing director PC backup with passport scans
15 years of financial statements
Shareholder agreements
IT credentials master spreadsheet
4 passport scans
25 complete HR files
50–100 job applicant CVs
BMD accounting database with payroll
SEPA payment records
VAT declarations
12 Bitlocker recovery keys
137 executed NDAs with partners (Airbus, RUAG, Safran, Thales, ESA, BMW, Tesla, Google, Samsung SDI, CERN, DLR, etc.)
Bank records
Insurance policies

What the group claims

*** (AAC) — an Austrian space-materials R&D company headquartered in Wiener Neustadt, with deep ties to the European Space Agency. Obtained two complete NAS snapshots spanning 30+ years of operations: aacdata (31 December 2022) — 123 GB: the complete Testhouse, R&D, and engineering share, including the ESA thermal vacuum test archive, polymer composites formulations, and 22 Outlook PST email backups. aacdata1 (14 January 2025) — 86 GB: the administrative share, including managing director's full PC backup (browser credentials, passport scans), 15 years of financial statements, shareholder agreements, and the IT credentials master spreadsheet. BMD_DATA — 34 MB: the complete BMD business software accounting database with employee payroll, SEPA payments, and VAT declarations. done/ — Bitlocker recovery keys for 12 endpoints and WMI system dumps. The exposed material includes: 4 passport scans, 1 social security number, 25 employees' complete HR files, 50–100+ job applicant CVs — the full identity-theft toolkit for the workforce plus third-party data subjects. The IT credentials master spreadsheet (AAC CODES.xlsx) containing every system password, plus browser-stored logins for ESA SSO, the company's IT provider, and industrial suppliers. 12 Bitlocker recovery keys enabling full-disk decryption of 6 company laptops. 123 GB of ESA thermal vacuum test data — 30+ years of space-grade materials testing that represents the company's core competitive advantage and cannot be recreated. 137 executed NDAs with partners including Airbus, RUAG, Safran, Thales, ESA, BMW, Tesla, Google, Samsung SDI, CERN, DLR, and 126 others. 15 years of annual financial statements, bank records, insurance policies, and shareholder agreements — the company's entire financial anatomy laid bare.

Sources

Source

Indexed 11 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 aurora

Aurora is a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in April 2026, operating with apparent financial motivations through targeted attacks across multiple sectors. Given its recent emergence, limited public documentation exists regarding the group's specific country of origin or affiliations with established ransomware operations, though its targeting patterns suggest a professional operation potentially operating as an independent entity rather than a known Ransomware-as-a-Service model. The group has demonstrated a preference for attacking business-critical sectors including business services, consumer services, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services, with documented attacks spanning the United States, Canada, the Maldives, and Great Britain, though specific initial access vectors and technical methodologies remain undocumented by major threat intelligence firms. With only seven known victims documented since April 2026, Aurora represents a relatively small-scale operation compared to established ransomware families, though its cross-sector targeting approach and international victim scope indicate deliberate selection criteria rather than opportunistic attacks. The group remains active as of current reporting, though the limited victim count and recent emergence suggest either a highly selective targeting approach or a nascent operation still developing its operational capabilities. The group has been linked to 21 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 29, 2026; most recent post June 30, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

June 22, 2026Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH listed by auroraon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Manufacturing sector, which has 3,678 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH is reported in Germany, a country with 378 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by aurora means Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH 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 aurora'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.