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NorthWest Handling Systems

Claimed by AUR0RA · listed 3 months ago

33 GB (CAD files alone)
Data size
337000+ files, 24669 rows of fixed-asset data records
2m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedJun 6, 2026
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
AUR0RA
Status
Data leaked
Country
United States
Sector
Warehousing/Material Handling
Listed on leak site
Jun 6, 2026
Data size
33 GB (CAD files alone)
Records
337000+ files, 24669 rows of fixed-asset data

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

NorthWest Handling Systems is a 55-year-old forklift and warehouse equipment company headquartered in Renton, Washington, with regional branches across Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. The company serves commercial and industrial customers across the Pacific Northwest.

Industry
Material Handling Equipment & Forklift Sales/Service
Address
Renton, Washington, US
Employees
55
Founded
1969

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration of massive scale: plaintext financial credentials enabling fraud against Fortune 50 companies; employee SSNs/tax IDs; customer security-sensitive facility blueprints; 33 GB of regulated data spanning 37+ years; direct operational risk to multiple critical vendors.

AUR0RA claims to have exfiltrated the entire corporate file share spanning 1988–present, containing 337,000+ files across all departments and branches. The disclosure includes plaintext financial credentials, employee PII, customer facility blueprints, and decades of business records.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Plaintext credit card numbers (Excel spreadsheet)
  • Employee Social Security numbers and Taxpayer IDs
  • W-9 forms and government-contract payroll documents
  • Plaintext vendor portal passwords (Target, Home Depot, Albertsons/Safeway)
  • 33 GB customer warehouse CAD files (Nike, Google, Costco, Umpqua Bank facilities)
  • Fixed-asset inventory and depreciation schedules
  • Corporate bank routing and account numbers
  • Employee direct-deposit details and time cards
  • Disciplinary records and accident reports
  • Decades of invoices and financial records

What the group claims

A 55-year-old forklift and warehouse equipment company headquartered in Renton, Washington, with branches across WA, OR, and AK. The dump is the entire corporate file share going back to 1988.

The leak post

captured from the group's site
[ NorthWest Handling Systems — a 55-year-old forklift and warehouse equipment company headquartered in Renton, Washington, with branches across WA, OR, and AK. The dump is the entire corporate file share going back to 1988. 337,000+ files spanning every branch, every department, every era of the company. It includes: Plaintext credit card numbers in an Excel spreadsheet literally titled “C.O.D. info (CREDIT CARD INFO).xlsx” — stored at the root of the file server, unencrypted, for years. Social Security numbers and Taxpayer IDs on W-9 forms and certified payroll documents for government-contract work (USPS, Oregon DHS, public schools). 3+ years of plaintext passwords for Target Corporation’s vendor portal (TARS), stored in Word documents titled “TARGET PASSWORD & SECURITY QUESTIONS.” Each password rotation was saved as a new file. Home Depot Maximo DC billing credentials — plaintext, in a Word document, enabling fraudulent invoicing against a Fortune 50 company. Albertsons/Safeway Corrigo facility-management portal credentials — again, plaintext in a .docx file. 33 GB of customer warehouse CAD files — facility layouts, equipment placement, security-zone dimensions, and fire-protect…

Data the group says was taken

  • credit card numbers
  • Social Security numbers
  • Taxpayer IDs
  • W-9 forms
  • certified payroll documents
  • plaintext passwords
  • vendor portal credentials
  • CAD files
  • fixed-asset data
  • bank routing and account numbers
  • ACH authorization forms
  • employee direct-deposit details
  • time cards
  • disciplinary records
  • accident reports
  • invoices

Screenshot of the leak post

Leak screenshot for NorthWest Handling Systems

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.

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Disclosure context

About AUR0RA

AUR0RA is a ransomware group first observed in June 2026 with an apparent financial motivation, having claimed responsibility for attacks against at least five known victims across the United States, Canada, and Australia. Given the recency of the group's emergence and the limited number of confirmed victims, detailed public attribution from major threat intelligence organizations such as CISA, the FBI, or Mandiant has not yet been established, and as such claims regarding origin, affiliation, or operational infrastructure cannot be responsibly made at this time. The group's targeting pattern suggests a deliberate focus on mid-market industries including commercial interiors, real estate and title insurance, warehousing and material handling, manufacturing, and oil and gas and industrial manufacturing sectors, which may indicate an opportunistic selection strategy or a preference for organizations with potentially sensitive operational or financial data and limited cybersecurity maturity. No specific attack methodology, tooling, or extortion tactics have been publicly documented by reputable sources for this group as of the time of this writing, though the sector targeting profile is consistent with groups known to conduct double extortion operations. AUR0RA should be considered an emerging threat actor under active monitoring, with its current operational status assessed as active based on the recency of first observed activity and the absence of any publicly reported law enforcement disruption or disbandment. The group has been linked to 10 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on June 6, 2026; most recent post August 20, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • June 6, 2026NorthWest Handling Systems listed by AUR0RAon the group's public leak site
Data size
33 GB (CAD files alone)
Records
337000+ files, 24669 rows of fixed-asset data

Other recent disclosures by AUR0RA

AUR0RA has been linked to 10 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full AUR0RA dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Warehousing/Material Handling sector. Geographically, NorthWest Handling Systems is reported in United States, a country with 3,162 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by AUR0RA means NorthWest Handling Systems 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 AUR0RA'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.