Disclosure context

About Abyss

Abyss is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in March 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors with a focus on English-speaking countries. The group's origin and affiliations remain largely undocumented by major security agencies, though their targeting patterns suggest they operate independently rather than as a Ransomware-as-a-Service model. Their attack methodology and specific tools have not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence firms, though their victim profile of 87 organizations indicates they employ effective initial access techniques to compromise business services, technology, healthcare, and agriculture sectors. The group demonstrates a clear geographic preference for targets in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, and Hong Kong, suggesting either language preferences or specific regional access capabilities. Due to the group's recent emergence and relatively limited public documentation from established security researchers, detailed information about notable campaigns, encryption methods, or law enforcement actions remains scarce. Abyss appears to remain active as of current reporting, though the lack of extensive public analysis by major threat intelligence organizations suggests they may operate at a smaller scale compared to more prominent ransomware families. The group has been linked to 98 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on March 21, 2023; most recent post May 18, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

September 22, 2025optimumdesign.com listed by Abysson the group's public leak site

Data size: 29 GB
Ransom demanded: $50

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Technology sector, which has 2,524 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, optimumdesign.com is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

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.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Optimum Design Associates

listed as optimumdesign.com · Claimed by Abyss · listed 8 months ago

29 GB

Data size

$50

Ransom

demanded

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Sep 22, 2025
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Abyss
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Technology
Listed on leak site: Sep 22, 2025
Data size: 29 GB
Ransom demanded: $50

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Optimum Design Associates (an Emerald Technologies Company) specializes in PCB design services, leveraging elite experience and proven methodologies to deliver high-quality electronic engineering solutions. The company was acquired by Emerald Technologies in 2024. Its customer base includes major defense and technology firms such as Amazon, Siemens, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Garrett Motion, Teledyne, Viasat, and Synopsys.

Industry: PCB Design & Electronic Engineering Services

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim serves major defense contractors (Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Teledyne, Viasat), meaning exfiltrated PCB design and engineering data may include sensitive or defense-adjacent intellectual property; 795 GB of data has been fully published, confirming large-scale exfiltration of potentially regulated and strategically sensitive material.

The Abyss ransomware group claims to have exfiltrated 795 GB (uncompressed) of data from Optimum Design Associates and has published the data via onion links, including a file list and multi-part archive.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Engineering/PCB design files
Business and client records
Internal company documents
Potentially defense-related project data

The group's post references roughly 4 proof files.

What the group claims

Optimum Design Associates specializes in PCB design services, leveraging elite experience and proven methodologies to deliver high-quality electronic engineering solutions.

The leak post

captured from the group's site

```
let data = [
{
        'title' : 'thinlinetech.com',
        'short' : 'thinlinetech.com 29Gb uncompressed data',
        'full' : 'Thinline Technologies <br>' +
                 'Thinline Technologies offers reliable IT consulting and expert computer and network support services to businesses in the Baltimore metro area.<br> They specialize in network administration, technology planning, and help desk services, focusing on increasing productivity and profitability for small to mid-size businesses.<br>'+
            'password: 6oGfyIRISQmmI3Ge2kEeyu7hbzONONEFpkcnhC1S4Ygk4iSpw4RRxDXY1uk9xeyUXOmg7UOuZvGekRc9cs8E61LWKdI08uv0kUyC4V6YxaETtrhniAtKD9t7FQ2qTFYi<br>'+
            'Link â„–1 Filelist',
        'links' : [
            "http://zngbsq66uwem4qzyxpqb5rjo2xebnbwdku27nhmquryx6ljnbbedhiad.onion/thinline.lst.zip",
            "http://zngbsq66uwem4qzyxpqb5rjo2xebnbwdku27nhmquryx6ljnbbedhiad.onion/thinline.rar"
        ]
},
{
        'title' : 'crownlaboratories.com',
        'short' : 'crownlaboratories.com 8Tb uncompressed data',
        'full' : 'Crown Laboratories <br>' +
                 'Crown Laboratories, founded in 2000 and based in Johnson City, TN, provides pharmaceutica…

Screenshot of the leak post

Sources

Victim siteoptimumdesign.com

Source

Indexed 8 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.