Was The Sole hit by ransomware?

The Sole was listed by the thegentlemen ransomware operation (United Kingdom), 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 thegentlemen ransomware group?

thegentlemen 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 The Sole breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to The Sole. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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The Sole Proprietor

listed as The Sole · Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 3 days ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedSep 1, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: United Kingdom
Sector: Retail & E-Commerce
Listed on leak site: Sep 1, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The Sole Proprietor is a seafood restaurant located in Worcester, Massachusetts, that has been operating for over 40 years. It has been named Worcester's best seafood restaurant in local reader polls every year since 1979 and ranks among the top 10 seafood restaurants in the United States. The restaurant offers dine-in, takeout, and delivery services.

Industry: Food Service & Restaurants — Seafood
Address: 118 Highland Street, Worcester, MA
Founded: 1979

Attack summary

Severity: low — Post is a listing/announcement with no substantive proof, no clear data inventory, and no stated operational impact. The conflation of two unrelated businesses suggests either misattribution, misinformation, or a test post; without corroboration, credibility is severely compromised.

The leak post claims the threat actor has accessed data from thesole.com, but provides no detail on what data was exfiltrated or whether encryption occurred. The post conflates two entirely different entities: a UK sneaker/streetwear e-commerce platform (thesole.com) with a Massachusetts seafood restaurant (The Sole Proprietor). No proof files, screenshots, or operational impact are mentioned.

low

What the group claims

thesole.com zoominfo.com/c/the-sole-proprietor/94159619 The Sole Supplier — UK sneaker and streetwear platform, founded in 2013 by George Sullivan in London. Started as a £100 blog in his parents' house — no investors, fully bootstrapped for 12+ years. Model: media content (release dates, reviews) + affiliate links to 50+ retailers — earns commission, holds no stock. Works with 30+ brands including Nike, adidas, UGG, Dr. Martens; claims to be Nike's top UK media partner. Scale: 4.5M monthly users, £400M+ lifetime sales driven for brands, with only ~35 staff. In 2026 relaunched its app as a "micro-social" shopping community for sneaker culture. Risks: thin margins, UK-only focus, and dependence on affiliate rates and brand budgets.

Sources

Victim sitethesole.com

Source

Indexed 3 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 thegentlemen

thegentlemen is a ransomware group that emerged in September 2025, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their broad targeting of commercial sectors. The group has documented 267 victims across multiple countries, with primary focus on the United States, Thailand, France, Brazil, and India. Their targeting strategy demonstrates a preference for high-value sectors including manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and financial services organizations. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources such as CISA, FBI, or major security research firms, specific details regarding their country of origin, operational structure, attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and whether they employ ransomware-as-a-service models remain unclear. The relatively high victim count of 267 in a short operational timeframe since September 2025 suggests either an aggressive campaign pace or potential inflation of victim numbers through affiliate operations, though without corroborating intelligence reports, the group's exact operational capabilities and notable campaigns cannot be definitively established. Current intelligence indicates the group remains active as of late 2025, though comprehensive threat profiling requires additional validated reporting from authoritative cybersecurity sources. The group has been linked to 813 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post September 2, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

September 1, 2026The Sole listed by thegentlemenon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 813 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full thegentlemen dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Retail & E-Commerce sector, which has 21 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, The Sole is reported in United Kingdom, a country with 377 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means The Sole 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, NCSC (United Kingdom), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on thegentlemen'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.