Disclosure context

About payoutsking

PayoutsKing is a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in July 2025, operating with apparent financial motivations and demonstrating broad geographic and sectoral targeting capabilities. With limited public documentation available from major threat intelligence sources, the group's origin and affiliations remain unclear, though their targeting pattern suggests a professional ransomware operation rather than opportunistic attacks. Based on available victim data, PayoutsKing has compromised approximately 60 organizations across multiple sectors, with primary focus on the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, and Spain, targeting manufacturing, healthcare, technology, and construction industries alongside various other sectors. The group's attack methodology, encryption techniques, and whether they employ double or triple extortion tactics have not been publicly detailed by established security researchers or government agencies. Given the group's recent emergence in July 2025, there are no widely reported major campaigns or high-profile incidents documented by reputable sources such as CISA, FBI, or Mandiant at this time. PayoutsKing appears to remain active as of current reporting, though comprehensive threat intelligence profiles from established security firms have not yet been published due to the group's recent emergence. The group has been linked to 100 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on July 7, 2025; most recent post May 13, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

April 30, 2026Aero-Coating listed by payoutskingon the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Manufacturing sector, which has 2,458 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Aero-Coating is reported in DE, a country with 333 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

AERO-COATING GmbH

listed as Aero-Coating · Claimed by payoutsking · listed 21 days ago

21d

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Apr 30, 2026
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: payoutsking
Status: Data leaked
Country: DE
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Apr 30, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

AERO-COATING GmbH is an independent, EN 9100-certified surface coating service provider headquartered in Wismar, Germany, specialising in coatings for safety-critical and structurally critical components in the aerospace and defence sectors. Founded in 1994, the company offers over five coating processes including IVD aluminium, vacuum cadmium (PVD), resin-based coatings, titanium anodising, and aerospace-spec painting, serving more than 100 customers domestically and internationally. Its location near the Hamburg aerospace cluster supports supply to major OEMs and defence contractors.

Industry: Aerospace & Defence Surface Coating Services
Address: Wismar, Germany
Founded: 1994

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is an EN 9100-certified aerospace and defence supplier providing MIL-SPEC-compliant coatings for mission-critical and structurally critical components. A confirmed data_published status involving a defence-sector contractor handling sensitive technical, contractual, and specification data relating to military aerospace components meets the threshold for critical severity due to the national security and supply-chain implications.

The ransomware group 'payoutsking' claims to have attacked AERO-COATING GmbH and lists the disclosure status as data_published, indicating data has been exfiltrated and published. The specific data categories and volume are not described in the leak post.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Business data (unspecified)
Potentially proprietary coating process documentation
Potentially customer and contract records
Potentially defence/military specification compliance data

Original description

AI-summarised, not from the leak post

N/A

The leak post

captured from the group's site

PayoutsKing PayoutsKing Blog News About Partnership Welcome PK MAIN TOX: 535F403A2EA2DC71A392E18D7DB77FEF70845C0B7E5B9114CD30D301870304379C3547E324E2 Company Create Website Country Revenue Employees Actions Data Views Status H****l 2026-04-21 t****.com USA $786M ** Exfiltrated 860GB 0 Declared 1d 02:08 F****p 2026-04-14 fl****.com USA $2.7B ** Exfiltrated &amp; Encrypted 1.1TB 0 Declared 1d 02:08 H****o 2026-04-01 has****.com USA $TBD ** Exfiltrated &amp; Encrypted 4.8TB 0 Declared 1d 02:08 A****y 2026-03-31 ape****.com USA $309M ** Exfiltrated &amp; Encrypted 3TB 0 Declared 2d 00:04 NTN Bearing Corporation of America 2026-04-24 ntnamericas.com USA $1.5B 4700 Exfiltrated 596GB 420 Proof 6d 02:09 About company: NTN Bearing is a producer of ball and roller bearings, with plants around the globe and a strong, domestic manufacturing network. Data description: Confidential, Employees&#39; PII (Personally Identifiable Information), Correspondence, Financial, Engineering, Contracts, Agreements, NDA, FULL INFO SunSource 2026-04-20 sun-source.com USA $2B 3500 Exfiltrated 700GB 3401 Disclosed About company: SunSource is a distribution company, providing products, services, and information in…

Sources

Victim siteaero-coating.de
Leak posthttp://payoutsgn7cy6uliwevdqspncjpfxpmzgirwl2au65la7rfs5x3qnbqd.onion/gC9LlM-hj4AU8-6bxwfv-1B8CuO-2ZQ388

Source

Indexed 21 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.