Was Autohaus Elstermann hit by ransomware?

Autohaus Elstermann was listed by the Spacebears 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 Spacebears ransomware group?

Spacebears 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 Autohaus Elstermann breach?

Spacebears published data attributed to Autohaus Elstermann. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Autohaus Elstermann

Claimed by Spacebears · listed 7 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedDec 24, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Spacebears
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Listed on leak site: Dec 24, 2025

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Autohaus Elstermann is a regional car dealership and service centre located in Klein-Scharrel (Edewecht/Ammerland area), Germany. It is an authorised dealer and workshop for Renault, Dacia, and KIA vehicles, offering new and used car sales, financing, inspections, tyre and engine servicing, as well as an AVIA fuel station and car wash.

Industry: Automotive Dealership & Repair Services
Address: Küstenkanalstr. 92 – 93, 26188 Klein-Scharrel, Germany

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data is marked as published, implying exfiltration has occurred and data has been released; however, no specific data types, volume, or proof files are described in the leak post, and the post content appears mismatched with the actual victim, limiting confidence in the scope of the breach.

The Spacebears ransomware group has listed Autohaus Elstermann with a 'data_published' status, indicating they claim to have exfiltrated and published data from the company. The leak post content is anomalous — it describes Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine rather than the actual victim — suggesting possible misattribution or a placeholder error in the post.

medium

What the group claims

Performance, reliability, safety – what distinguishes Renault / Dacia / Kia vehicles also applies to us. We offer you excellent service, good prices, expert advice, and a friendly team.Comprehensive service for carefree driving pleasure. You can rely on it, because nobody knows your Renault better than we do.DatabaseFinancial documentsPersonal information of employees and clients https://www.autohaus-elstermann.de/

The leak post

captured from the group's site

## Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine
Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (formerly known as Janssen Pharmaceuticals) is the pharmaceutical division of the American corporation Johnson & Johnson, specializing in the development and production of revolutionary medicines. The company focuses on creating treatments for the most complex diseases, transforming the future of healthcare.

Sources

Source

Indexed 7 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 Spacebears

Spacebears is a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in April 2024, operating with apparent financial motivations and demonstrating a broad targeting approach across multiple sectors and geographic regions. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain unclear due to limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources, though their targeting pattern suggests a professional operation focused on maximizing financial returns rather than geopolitical objectives. With 117 known victims since their emergence, Spacebears has shown particular focus on organizations in the United States, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Canada, with their attacks primarily affecting technology, healthcare, manufacturing, and business services sectors, indicating they likely employ opportunistic targeting rather than sector-specific specialization. Their attack methodology, initial access vectors, and specific technical capabilities have not been extensively documented in public reporting from major cybersecurity firms or law enforcement agencies, limiting detailed analysis of their operational procedures and tools. Due to the group's recent emergence and limited public intelligence reporting, notable high-profile campaigns and specific victim details remain largely undocumented in established threat intelligence channels. The group's current operational status appears active given their recent emergence timeline, though comprehensive analysis is constrained by the lack of detailed public reporting from authoritative cybersecurity sources. The group has been linked to 185 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 29, 2024; most recent post July 13, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: space bears.

Timeline of this disclosure

December 24, 2025Autohaus Elstermann listed by Spacebearson the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Spacebears

Spacebears has been linked to 185 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Spacebears dossier →

Sector and geography

Geographically, Autohaus Elstermann is reported in Germany, a country with 926 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Spacebears means Autohaus Elstermann 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 Spacebears'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.