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ESA Suffers Cyberattack; Confidential Data, Source Code Stolen
Wednesday, December 31, 2025
What
The European Space Agency (ESA) experienced a cyberattack resulting in the alleged theft of 200 GB of sensitive internal documents, source code, and technical data related to space programs. This is significant as it exposes confidential engineering and operational details from a critical international agency and its partners.
Where
European Space Agency (ESA), affecting internal systems and data from partners like Airbus Defence & Space and Thales Alenia Space.
When
Disclosed by a security researcher on December 26, 2023, with ESA confirming the "recent" incident and ongoing forensic analysis.
Key Factors
- •A cyberpirate named Mod888 claims to have exfiltrated over 200 GB of data, including dumps of all private Bitbucket repositories, and is selling it on a dark web forum.
- •The stolen data reportedly includes confidential internal documents from partners like Airbus Defence & Space and Thales Alenia Space, along with source code, CI/CD pipelines, and configuration files (Terraform, SQL).
- •ESA acknowledges the breach but states it affected a "very small number of servers" containing "unclassified collaborative engineering activities data."
Takeaways
- →Organizations handling sensitive data, especially in critical infrastructure sectors, must implement robust data loss prevention (DLP) and continuous monitoring to detect and prevent exfiltration.
- →Agencies should conduct regular, thorough security audits of all internal and partner-facing systems, including code repositories and CI/CD pipelines, to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities.
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