Was Lee Hartman & Sons hit by ransomware?

Lee Hartman & Sons was listed by the Metaencryptor ransomware operation (United States), 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 Lee Hartman & Sons breach?

Metaencryptor published data attributed to Lee Hartman & Sons. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Lee Hartman & Sons

Claimed by Metaencryptor · listed 1 year ago

$18.5M

Ransom

demanded

17m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJan 27, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Metaencryptor
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Listed on leak site: Jan 27, 2025
Ransom demanded: $18.5M
Estimated revenue: $18.5M

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Lee Hartman & Sons, Inc. is an audiovisual systems integrator and rental company established in 1936, operating in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. They provide design, engineering, installation, service, and rental of AV, presentation, videoconferencing, digital signage, and broadcast solutions across corporate, government, healthcare, education, worship, and residential sectors.

Industry: Audiovisual Systems Integration & Rental
Founded: 1936

Attack summary

Severity: high — Confirmed data exfiltration with published disclosure; company serves government, healthcare, and educational institutions whose data may be at risk; operational disruption to a critical service provider affecting multiple sectors.

Metaencryptor claims to have encrypted Lee Hartman & Sons' systems and exfiltrated data. The group has published data from the breach, though specific data categories are not detailed in the available post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Business operations records
Client/customer information
Project documentation
Financial records

What the group claims

Lee Hartman & Sons, Inc., provides design, engineering, installation, service and rental services of audiovisual, presentation, videoconferencing, video-streaming, digital signage, video-production, and broadcast solutions in the Mid Atlantic Region of United States. The company was established in 1936. Revenue $18.5 Million

Sources

Source

Indexed 1 year 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

January 27, 2025Lee Hartman & Sons listed by Metaencryptoron the group's public leak site

Ransom demanded: $18.5M

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

Geographically, Lee Hartman & Sons is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Metaencryptor means Lee Hartman & Sons 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, CISA (United States), 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.