Was Hartfiel Automation hit by ransomware?

Hartfiel Automation was listed by the thegentlemen 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 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 Hartfiel Automation breach?

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

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Hartfiel Automation

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 23 hours ago

Today

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 7, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: Germany
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Aug 7, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Hartfiel Automation is an industrial automation distributor and solutions provider headquartered in Minnesota with over 60 years of operational history. They supply pneumatics, robotics, motion control, hydraulics, and related components to the American manufacturing sector, and offer value-added services including assembly, engineering design, and their proprietary Customer Profit Reinforcement (CPR) consulting process.

Industry: Industrial Automation & Manufacturing Solutions
Employees: hundreds

Attack summary

Severity: low — Disclosed status indicates data_published, but no proof files, screenshots, or data inventory are advertised in the available post excerpt. Attack details and data sensitivity are not specified.

The group claims to have conducted an attack on Hartfiel Automation and published data. No specific attack methodology (encryption vs. exfiltration) or data categories are detailed in the available leak post excerpt.

low

What the group claims

hartfiel.com zoominfo.com/c/hartfiel-automation-inc/27608695 Hartfiel Automation is an industrial automation company providing comprehensive manufacturing solutions like pneumatics, robotics, motion control, and hydraulics. For over 60 years, they have been a specialized high-tech provider supporting the American manufacturing sector. Headquartered in Minnesota, the company employs hundreds of professionals dedicated to engineering and optimizing production processes

Sources

Victim sitehartfiel.com

Source

Indexed 23 hours 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 724 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post August 7, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

August 7, 2026Hartfiel Automation listed by thegentlemenon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 724 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 Manufacturing sector, which has 3,692 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Hartfiel Automation is reported in Germany, a country with 382 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Hartfiel Automation 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 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.