Was City of New Castle hit by ransomware?

City of New Castle was listed by the thegentlemen ransomware operation (United States), 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 City of New Castle breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to City of New Castle. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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City of New Castle

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 4 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedFeb 13, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Public Sector
Listed on leak site: Feb 13, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The City of New Castle is a municipal government entity located in New Castle County, Delaware, approximately 10 minutes south of Wilmington. It administers public services including utilities, public works, zoning, parks and recreation, police, and health and housing for a historic riverside city. The city operates multiple departments and engages with residents through community programs, elections, and planning commissions.

Industry: Municipal Government
Address: 220 Delaware Street, New Castle, DE 19720

Attack summary

Severity: high — The victim is a municipal government entity with data_published status, indicating exfiltration and publication of data has occurred. Government records likely include PII of residents, employee HR data, financial records, and utility billing information, constituting significant sensitive data exposure from a public sector target.

The group 'thegentlemen' claims to have attacked the City of New Castle with data published (disclosed status: data_published); however, the leak post itself was inaccessible due to a browser-verification challenge, preventing confirmation of specific exfiltration or encryption claims.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Government administrative records
Finance and audit documents
Human resources records
Utility billing data
FOIA-related documents
Zoning and building permit records
Public works records
Police department records

What the group claims

newcastlecity.delaware.gov zoominfo.com/c/city-of-new-castle/1205094711 The City of New Castle offers a vibrant, historic community situated along the Delaware River, known for its colonial charm and outdoor recreational spaces. It caters to residents, visitors, and businesses with services such as expedited permitting and reliable utilities. The city promotes a variety of recreational activities, including parks, trails, and community events. With a rich history and preservation efforts

The leak post

captured from the group's site

Gentlecloud Protection 🛡️ Gentlecloud Verifying your browser... Initializing security checks... I'm not a bot

Sources

Victim sitenewcastlecity.delaware.gov
Leak posthttp://tezwsse5czllksjb7cwp65rvnk4oobmzti2znn42i43bjdfd2prqqkad.onion

Source

Indexed 4 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

February 13, 2026City of New Castle 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 Public Sector sector, which has 260 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, City of New Castle is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means City of New Castle 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.