Was ASKUL hit by ransomware?

ASKUL was listed by the Ransomhouse 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 Ransomhouse ransomware group?

Ransomhouse 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 ASKUL breach?

Ransomhouse published data attributed to ASKUL (~743 GB). Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

ASKUL

Claimed by Ransomhouse · listed 9 months ago

743 GB

Data size

$740

Ransom

demanded

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedOct 30, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Ransomhouse
Status: Data leaked
Country: Japan
Sector: Consumer Services
Listed on leak site: Oct 30, 2025
Data size: 743 GB
Ransom demanded: $740

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

ASKUL Corporation is a major Japanese B2B e-commerce company operating at www.askul.co.jp, specializing in next-day delivery of office supplies, medical/care products, industrial materials, IT equipment, and consumables to businesses across Japan. The company serves small and medium enterprises primarily through its online platform and catalogue service, with headquarters in Koto-ku, Tokyo. ASKUL is a publicly listed company (Tokyo Stock Exchange) with annual revenues in the hundreds of billions of yen.

Industry: B2B E-Commerce / Office & Industrial Supplies Distribution
Address: 東京都江東区 (Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan, ~135-0061)
Employees: 2000-3000
Founded: 1993

Attack summary

Severity: critical — 743 GB of data has been published by the threat actor from a large-scale Japanese B2B e-commerce operator serving hundreds of thousands of business customers; the dataset likely contains extensive PII, financial records, and corporate customer data at significant scale, meeting the threshold for critical severity under confirmed exfiltration and publication of regulated/sensitive data.

RansomHouse claims to have exfiltrated 743 GB of data from ASKUL and the disclosure status is marked as 'data_published', indicating the stolen data has been or is being released. The group has not stated a separate encryption action in the visible post excerpt; the primary threat vector appears to be data exfiltration and publication.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Business customer records
Order and transaction history
Employee data
Financial and billing records
Supplier and vendor information
Internal operational documents
Potentially medical/care product procurement data

What the group claims

ASKUL Corporation, founded in 1963 and headquartered in Tokyo, is a leading Japanese e-commerce company serving both businesses (B2B) and consumers (B2C). It offers office supplies, daily goods, medical products, and logistics services through platforms such as ASKUL, SOLOEL ARENA, and LOHACO. The company operates its own distribution centers, ensuring fast delivery and efficient supply chain management. ASKUL also provides additional services like printing, office design, and digital business solutions. The company emphasizes sustainability, digital transformation, and recycling initiatives.

The leak post

captured from the group's site

```
{"data":[{"id":"a1894b76b7004c75a3a0845799af49956592e3d9","display":"animated","header":"HOT NEWS","info":" Trellix is a global cybersecurity company.","url":"","sort":1,"views":"436242"},{"id":"336b257f582b17573c97578efd4b22762bf77344","sort":2,"header":"Trellix (McAfee & FireEye)","url":"https://www.trellix.com/","private":"false","revenue":"1.5-2 B$","employees":"5000","info":"Trellix is a global cybersecurity company formed from the October 2021 merger of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye. It provides services to over 50,000 business and government customers worldwide, protecting more than 200 million endpoints. The companys open and native extended detection and response (XDR) platform helps organizations confronted by todays most advanced threats gain confidence in the protection and resilience of their operations. Trellix, along with an extensive partner ecosystem, accelerates technology innovation through machine learning and automation to empower over 40,000 business and government customers with living security","statusDate":"DEPENDS ON YOU","status":"EVIDENCE","published":"NOT YET","action":"Encrypted","actionDate":"17/04/2026","volume":"~","content":"cybersecurity.html"…

Sources

Source

Indexed 9 months 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 Ransomhouse

Ransomhouse is a ransomware group that emerged in June 2021, operating primarily for financial gain through extortion campaigns targeting organizations across multiple sectors globally. The group's origin and specific affiliations remain unclear based on publicly available intelligence, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent cybercriminal organization rather than a traditional ransomware-as-a-service model. Ransomhouse employs double extortion tactics, stealing sensitive data before deploying their ransomware payload and threatening to publish the information on their leak site if victims refuse to pay the demanded ransom. The group has demonstrated a broad targeting approach, with documented attacks against 187 victims primarily concentrated in the United States, China, United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain, focusing heavily on healthcare, technology, business services, and manufacturing sectors. While specific high-profile campaigns have not been extensively documented by major security firms, the group's consistent victim count and geographic distribution indicate sustained operational capability since their emergence. As of current reporting, Ransomhouse remains active with no known major law enforcement disruptions or confirmed rebranding efforts. The group has been linked to 210 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on June 1, 2021; most recent post June 29, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: RANSOM HOUSE.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 30, 2025ASKUL listed by Ransomhouseon the group's public leak site

Data size: 743 GB
Ransom demanded: $740

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Consumer Services sector, which has 829 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, ASKUL is reported in Japan, a country with 220 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Ransomhouse means ASKUL 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 Ransomhouse'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.