The Gentlemen Strike Auren: Ransomware Attack on Spanish Professional Services Leader

The Gentlemen Strike Auren: Ransomware Attack on Spanish Professional Services Leader
Target
Auren
Domain
auren.es
Country
Spain
Attacking Group
The Gentlemen
Date Reported
September 30, 2026

Summary

On September 30, 2026, the ransomware group The Gentlemen claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Auren (auren.es), a major Spanish professional services firm. The group has threatened to release sensitive data unless their demands are met.


Incident Report

Field Details
Target Auren
Domain auren.es
Country Spain
Attacking Group The Gentlemen
Date Reported September 30, 2026
Threat Actor Statement “auren.es zoominfo.com/c/auren/1115886722 AUREN (founded 1998, Madrid) is Spain’s leading home-grown multidisciplinary professional-services firm — audit, legal/tax advisory, consulting and corporate finance — with €104 million revenue in Spain and 1,100+ staff in 15 offices (2,500+ people and 62 offices worldwide). Founded and chaired by Mario Alonso Ayala, it sells an integrated ‘Big Four-style’ service portfolio to mid-market companies with a ‘humanist, close-to-client’ culture, plus standout niches in forensic/expert-witness work, public-sector audit and M&A. In March 2025, Dutch private equity fund Waterland took a 49% stake — the first PE investment in a Spanish professional-services firm — giving it firepower for acquisitions. Revenue is split roughly Legal €42M, Consulting €35M, Audit €24M, Corporate Finance €3.4M, and the firm is now on a buy-and-build spree (15–18 deals planned for 2026, its largest being the absorption of Moore España’s Madrid and Barcelona offices).”

Ransomware attacks are increasingly targeting both enterprise and mid-sized organizations across all sectors. The following steps are critical to reduce impact and prevent future incidents:

  • Monitor continuously: Use DeXpose’s dark web and infostealer monitoring platform to detect breached credentials, leaked databases, and threat actor chatter in near real-time—before damage spreads internally.
  • Conduct a compromise assessment: Immediately initiate a full incident review to determine how attackers infiltrated your network, what data may have been exfiltrated, and whether any persistence mechanisms remain active.
  • Validate your backups: Ensure that your backups are current, encrypted, and stored offline. Utilize immutable backup solutions to defend against ransomware encryption and deletion attempts.
  • Apply threat intelligence: Integrate external threat feeds, including DeXpose-provided indicators of compromise (IOCs), into your SIEM or XDR platforms for real-time alerting and correlation.
  • Harden employee defenses: Run phishing simulations and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) across all access points. Attackers often exploit weak or reused credentials sourced from the dark web.
  • Engage professional response teams: Involve cybersecurity incident response experts, threat analysts, and legal counsel before initiating any dialogue with ransomware groups or ransom brokers.

How DeXpose Helps You Stay Ahead

At DeXpose, we specialize in early detection and proactive defense. Our hybrid threat intelligence solution combines automated deep/dark web crawling, Telegram and forum monitoring, and real analyst verification to deliver:

  • Continuous scanning of ransomware group leak sites, stolen credential markets, and malware log dumps
  • Timely alerts for breaches linked to your domains, email addresses, and key personnel
  • Intelligence correlation that connects leaked credentials to infostealer malware infections, often weeks before a public ransom demand
  • Real-time visibility into supply chain and third-party exposures through passive surveillance of dark web channels

Don’t wait for public disclosure or ransom notices—gain visibility into your cyber exposure now.


Disclaimer

DeXpose does not engage in the exfiltration, hosting, redistribution, or purchase of stolen data. All breach information reported here is collected from publicly accessible dark web sources and threat intelligence platforms.
Our mission is to equip organizations with early-warning indicators, contextual threat insights, and actionable intelligence that help them secure their digital assets against evolving cyber threats.

More from the intel feed

All intel feeds