Disclosure context

About cipherforce

CipherForce is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in February 2026, appearing to be financially motivated based on their targeting patterns and operational characteristics. Given their recent emergence and limited public documentation, details about their specific country of origin and affiliations remain unclear, though their targeting of victims across the United States, United Arab Emirates, India, China, and Vietnam suggests either a geographically distributed operation or deliberate international scope. With only six known victims documented to date, the group appears to focus on technology companies, business services, and transportation/logistics sectors, though their attack methodology and specific tools have not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence firms or law enforcement agencies. No notable high-profile campaigns or significant ransoms have been publicly reported by CISA, FBI, or established security researchers, likely due to the group's recent emergence and relatively small victim count. CipherForce appears to remain active as of current reporting, though their limited operational history makes it difficult to assess their long-term viability or potential for expansion. The group has been linked to 6 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on February 23, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

February 23, 2026hiringsteps.com listed by cipherforceon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Business Services sector, which has 2,640 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, hiringsteps.com is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

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.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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HiringSteps

listed as hiringsteps.com · Claimed by cipherforce · listed 3 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Feb 23, 2026
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: cipherforce
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Business Services
Listed on leak site: Feb 23, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

HiringSteps (hiringsteps.com) is a cloud-based recruitment platform designed to streamline hiring processes for businesses of various sizes. The platform enables recruiters to post job openings, source candidates, conduct interviews, check references, and manage job offers within a single integrated system. It serves employers, recruiters, and candidates with the goal of reducing administrative overhead in recruitment workflows.

Industry: HR Technology & Recruitment Software

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data is marked as published, suggesting exfiltration occurred, but the leak post is AI-generated with no specific data inventory, proof files, or volume cited. A recruitment platform would likely hold PII (candidate resumes, contact details, employer data), which carries moderate-to-high sensitivity, but the absence of any concrete evidence or proof limits confidence in severity.

The cipherforce group claims to have published data from HiringSteps.com, with the disclosure status marked as data_published. The leak post description appears AI-generated and provides no specific details about the nature of exfiltrated data or whether encryption was involved.

medium

Original description

AI-summarised, not from the leak post

"HiringSteps.com" is a robust online cloud-based platform designed to streamline the recruitment processes for businesses of different sizes. The platform allows recruiters to post job openings, source candidates, conduct interviews, check references, and send job offers all in one place. It aims to simplify recruitment by reducing paperwork and improving coordination among employers, recruiters, and candidates.

Sources

Source

Indexed 3 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.