Was Cheoy Lee Shipyards hit by ransomware?

Cheoy Lee Shipyards was listed by the Dragonforce ransomware operation (Hong Kong SAR China), 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 Dragonforce ransomware group?

Dragonforce 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 Cheoy Lee Shipyards breach?

Dragonforce published data attributed to Cheoy Lee Shipyards. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Cheoy Lee Shipyards

Claimed by Dragonforce · listed 1 day ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJun 12, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Dragonforce
Status: Data leaked
Country: Hong Kong SAR China
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Jun 12, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Cheoy Lee Shipyards Ltd. is a Hong Kong-based shipbuilder with a primary production facility in Zhuhai, China, specializing in the design and manufacture of tugs, ferries, crew boats, pilot boats, harbour crafts, and luxury yachts up to 70 metres in length. The company serves global maritime industries with a workforce of up to 1,000 employees housed in onsite dormitories at their 12-hectare facility.

Industry: Shipbuilding & Maritime Vessel Manufacturing
Address: Hin Lee (Zhuhai) Shipyard, Zhuhai, Doumen, China; Headquarters in Hong Kong; North America Office
Employees: 1000

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data has been published by the threat actor, and the victim is a significant manufacturing company with operational footprint and workforce; however, the specific sensitivity and scale of exfiltrated data are not detailed in the available leak post excerpt. No evidence of regulated/sensitive data (PII at scale, financial records, or government contracts) is explicitly stated.

The dragonforce group claims to have accessed and published data from Cheoy Lee Shipyards. The leak post does not explicitly detail the scope of exfiltration or encryption, but the disclosure status is marked as 'data_published'.

medium

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Company operational/business data
Potentially employee records
Potentially design/technical specifications

What the group claims

Cheoy Lee Shipyards Ltd. specializes in the design and manufacturing of a diverse range of vessels, including tugs, ferries, crew boats, pilot boats, and luxury yachts. Their state-of-the-art facility in Zhuhai, China, is equipped with advanced machinery, enabling the production of high-quality vessels up to 70 meters in length. The company serves a global clientele, focusing on maritime industries that require innovative and efficient solutions for various operational needs. Cheoy Lee is committed to excellence, sustainability, and employee welfare, fostering a strong community within their workforce.

Sources

Source

Indexed 1 day 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 Dragonforce

Dragonforce is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in December 2023, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their targeting patterns and victim selection. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain unclear due to limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources, though their rapid accumulation of 439 documented victims suggests either sophisticated capabilities or possible connections to existing ransomware infrastructure. Based on their targeting patterns across diverse sectors including manufacturing, business services, technology, and construction, Dragonforce appears to employ opportunistic attack methodologies, though specific initial access vectors, encryption methods, and extortion tactics have not been publicly detailed by major security firms or law enforcement agencies. The group has demonstrated a preference for targeting organizations primarily in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Italy representing their most frequent victim locations, suggesting possible language capabilities or geographic operational preferences. As of current reporting, Dragonforce appears to remain active given their recent emergence and ongoing victim acquisition, though the lack of detailed public analysis from major threat intelligence organizations indicates either operational security measures that have limited researcher visibility or that the group has not yet conducted sufficiently high-profile attacks to warrant extensive public documentation by CISA, FBI, or established security research firms. The group has been linked to 596 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 13, 2023; most recent post June 12, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

June 12, 2026Cheoy Lee Shipyards listed by Dragonforceon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Dragonforce

Dragonforce has been linked to 596 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Dragonforce dossier →

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, Cheoy Lee Shipyards is reported in Hong Kong SAR China, a country with 23 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Dragonforce means Cheoy Lee Shipyards 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 Dragonforce'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.