Disclosure context

About akira

Akira is a ransomware group that emerged in April 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and has rapidly established itself as a significant threat actor with over 1,500 documented victims. The group's country of origin remains unclear, though they operate as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, recruiting affiliates to conduct attacks while the core group maintains the ransomware infrastructure and negotiation processes. Akira employs multi-faceted attack methodologies including exploitation of VPN vulnerabilities, particularly targeting Cisco VPN appliances, and utilizes living-off-the-land techniques along with legitimate administrative tools to avoid detection, while implementing double extortion tactics by exfiltrating sensitive data before deploying their encryption payload. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting organizations in the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, and Italy, with a particular focus on manufacturing, business services, technology, and construction sectors, though they have shown willingness to attack various industries. Despite being relatively new to the ransomware landscape, Akira has maintained consistent operations throughout 2023 and into 2024, with law enforcement agencies including CISA and FBI issuing advisories about their activities, though no major disruption operations have been publicly reported against the group as of late 2024. The group has been linked to 1,616 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 26, 2023; most recent post May 20, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: Megazord.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 11, 2026Circle U Foods listed by akiraon the group's public leak site

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, Circle U Foods 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

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Circle U Foods

Claimed by akira · listed 10 days ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
May 11, 2026
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: akira
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Agriculture and Food Production
Listed on leak site: May 11, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Circle U Foods, Inc. is a manufacturer of custom seasonings and flavored food grade oils based in Fort Worth, Texas. The company serves domestic and international restaurant chains, distributors, and food manufacturers. Its customer base spans both B2B foodservice and industrial food production sectors.

Industry: Custom Seasonings & Flavored Food Grade Oils Manufacturing
Address: Fort Worth, TX, United States

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration includes regulated PII at scale (SSNs, passport numbers) for employees, alongside financial and payment data, meeting the threshold for critical severity under regulated/sensitive data exposure.

Akira claims to have exfiltrated approximately 13 GB of corporate data from Circle U Foods, including employee PII (SSNs, passport numbers, contact details), client data, financial records, payment details, project documentation, and NDAs, with publication described as imminent.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Employee personal information (names, phone numbers, addresses, emails)
Employee SSNs
Employee passport numbers
Client data
Financial records
Payment details
Project drawings and specifications
NDAs

What the group claims

Circle U Foods, Inc. is a manufacturer of custom seasonings and flavored food grade oils based in Fort Worth, TX. The company serves domestic and international restaurant chains, distributor s, and food manufacturers. We will upload 13gb of corporate data soon. Employee personal information (phones, addresses, e mails, SSNs, passports numbers and so on), client data, financials, payment details, projects i nformation (drawings, specifications, etc), NDAs and so on.

Source

Indexed 10 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.