Was Sunspray Food hit by ransomware?

Sunspray Food was listed by the thegentlemen ransomware operation (South Africa), 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 Sunspray Food breach?

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

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Sunspray Solutions (Pty) Ltd

listed as Sunspray Food · Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 2 months ago

54d

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedApr 19, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: South Africa
Sector: Agriculture and Food Production
Listed on leak site: Apr 19, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Sunspray Solutions (Pty) Ltd is South Africa's largest independent manufacturer of spray-dried food ingredients, founded in 1944 and headquartered in Johannesburg. The company operates 10 spray dryers across two manufacturing sites in Industria (Johannesburg) and Bronkhorstspruit (Gauteng), producing caramel powders, fat powders, fruit and vegetable powders, creamers, egg powders, and cheese powders. In 2023, Israeli conglomerate Turpaz Industries acquired a 55% controlling stake in the business.

Industry: Spray-Dried Food Ingredients Manufacturing
Address: Industria, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa (second site: Bronkhorstspruit, Gauteng)
Founded: 1944

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been confirmed as published by the threat actor against a mid-sized food manufacturing company. While no specific regulated data categories (e.g. medical, financial at scale) are confirmed, exfiltration and public disclosure of business data from a manufacturing firm with multinational customers represents significant business and reputational harm, and may include employee or customer PII subject to South Africa's POPI Act.

The group 'thegentlemen' claims to have published data belonging to Sunspray Solutions (Pty) Ltd, indicating exfiltration and disclosure of company data. No ransom amount or data size was specified, but the disclosed status is marked as data_published.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Company business data
Potentially personal information (per POPI Act compliance context)

What the group claims

sunspray.co.za zoominfo.com/c/sunspray-food-ingredients-ltd/425184083 Sunspray Solutions (Pty) Ltd, founded in 1944 and headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, is the country's largest independent manufacturer of spray-dried food ingredients. The company operates 10 spray dryers across two manufacturing sites (Industria, Johannesburg and Bronkhorstspruit, Gauteng), producing hundreds of products including caramel powders, fat powders, fruit & vegetable powders, creamers, egg powders, and cheese powders. In 2023, Israeli company Turpaz Industries acquired a 55% controlling stake, enabling Sunspray's geographic and portfolio expansion

Sources

Victim sitesunspray.co.za

Source

Indexed 2 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 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 483 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post June 11, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

April 19, 2026Sunspray Food listed by thegentlemenon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 483 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 Agriculture and Food Production sector, which has 536 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Sunspray Food is reported in South Africa, a country with 15 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Sunspray Food 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.
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.