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# The State of Ransomware Q2 2026
- URL: https://f4n6.co.uk/security-feed/the-state-of-ransomware-q2-2026/
- Published: 2026-08-13T20:32:47.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-13T20:32:47.000Z
- Author: Jeff Davies
- Tags: #security-feed, qilin, The Gentlemen, krybit

## 1\. Executive summary

Check Point Research's Q2 2026 ransomware landscape report records 2,139 victims on data-leak sites — flat quarter-over-quarter but up 33% year-over-year — with the active group count climbing from 71 to 93\. The ecosystem remains concentrated at the top (top 10 groups: 57.6% of victims) but the tail is widening, lowering the barrier to entry. Qilin (279 victims) and The Gentlemen (269 victims, up 62% QoQ) dominate; both lack MITRE ATT&CK profiles, so attribution-level detail must be treated as unconfirmed. A separate Comparitech tally shows ransomware attacks against the financial sector rose 71% in July 2026 — the steepest sector increase — with finance firms paying ransoms 51% of the time even as the global payment rate fell to \~23%. The exploitation window from disclosure to weaponisation continues to narrow, with AI cited as an accelerant. EMEA financial services clients face elevated, sustained targeting from two prolific RaaS operations whose initial-access methods align with common weaknesses (stolen credentials, zero-day exploitation) that standard MFA and patch hygiene can disrupt.

## 2\. Regulatory framing

| Article                                                                     | Trigger (the fact in this item)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               | Practical impact                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| DORA Art. 18: classification of ICT-related incidents and cyber threats     | The 71% July spike in ransomware attacks against the financial sector and the confirmed 51% payer rate for finance firms constitute a specific, quantified cyber-threat trend that materially affects how a financial entity should classify and prioritise ransomware-related ICT incidents. | Clients should ensure their incident classification taxonomy accounts for the heightened sector-specific threat frequency when rating ransomware events, potentially escalating severity tiers for credential-theft-driven intrusions. |
| DORA Art. 24: digital operational resilience testing — general requirements | The narrowing exploitation window (vulnerabilities weaponised within hours to days of disclosure, accelerated by AI) directly raises the urgency and frequency demands on vulnerability-driven resilience testing programmes.                                                                 | Clients should review whether current vulnerability scanning and penetration-testing cadences are sufficient given sub-day weaponisation timelines; prioritise rapid patch validation for internet-facing services.                    |

No specific NIS2 or UK NIS article is directly engaged beyond general incident-management duties that apply to any security event.

## 3\. Technical analysis & attack chain

This is a strategic threat-landscape report, not a single-incident technical breakdown. The following synthesises the operational mechanics described across the source material.

**Ecosystem dynamics.** The Q2 2026 data shows 2,139 victims posted to data-leak sites, up 33% year-over-year. The top 10 groups accounted for 57.6% of victims (down from 71% in Q1), while active groups rose from 71 to 93 — a new high. This indicates a widening affiliate base and lower barriers to entry, partly attributed to AI-assisted tooling development.

**The Gentlemen — internal leak findings.** An internal leak of chat logs and platform data revealed a core team of approximately nine operators with a broader affiliate base. The group offered affiliates 90% of any ransom paid — an aggressive revenue-share model driving rapid recruitment. The leak confirmed the group used AI coding assistants to build its ransomware management panel in approximately three days, providing first-party evidence of AI accelerating malicious tooling development. The Gentlemen claimed 269 victims in Q2 (up 62% QoQ) and 135 in July alone, outpacing Qilin for the month of June. Attribution is unconfirmed: The Gentlemen has no MITRE ATT&CK profile in the verified reference data.

**Qilin.** Remained the most prolific operator for a fourth consecutive quarter with 279 Q2 victims, though its count fell 17% QoQ. Qilin claimed 125 victims in July. Qilin has no MITRE ATT&CK profile in the verified reference data; attribution is unconfirmed. Qilin previously told The Register it abused zero-day vulnerabilities for initial access (referencing the 2024 Synnovis attack), but no specific CVEs or exploitation details are provided in the current source material.

**The Gentlemen — initial access method.** Trend Micro characterised The Gentlemen's methodology as using stolen credentials. No specific TTPs, tool names, or technical artefacts are provided in the sources beyond this high-level description. This is a single-sourced claim (Trend Micro via The Register); verify before enforcement.

**Krybit.** Identified as a newly active, fast-growing group in Q2\. No victim count, TTPs, or technical details are provided. Krybit has no MITRE ATT&CK profile; attribution is unconfirmed.

**Ransom payment landscape.** Global payment rates fell to \~23% (a six-year decline from 85% in 2019). However, on-chain payments exceeded $820 million in 2025\. The payer market is bifurcating: average payments are rising while the median falls, indicating large enterprises continue paying heavily while mid-market firms increasingly refuse or settle for less. DeepStrike reports finance firms pay ransoms 51% of the time — the lowest among top-paying sectors but still a majority rate.

**Law enforcement actions (Q2).** Actions targeted shared infrastructure rather than individual groups: takedown of a cryptocurrency laundering platform used by multiple ransomware actors; sanctions against major Iranian digital asset exchanges; dismantling of a malware signing service abused by several RaaS operations; disruption of large infostealer and VPN anonymisation networks. No specific platform names, indictments, or technical infrastructure details are provided.

**Exploitation acceleration.** The report states vulnerabilities are now being weaponised within hours to days of disclosure, with AI cited as the accelerant lowering exploit development costs. No specific CVEs, exploit code, or technical mechanisms are detailed.

## 4\. Mitigation & containment

### P1 — within 24 hours

- Enforce phishing-resistant MFA on all externally facing authentication surfaces. The Gentlemen's reported use of stolen credentials makes credential-theft-driven initial access the highest-probability vector for EMEA finance clients. Review MFA coverage gaps for VPN, RDP, email, and admin consoles.
- Validate that EDR is deployed and active on all endpoints with current detection signatures. Ensure alerting for credential-dumping tools, suspicious PowerShell, and anomalous authentication patterns is tuned.
- Confirm backup integrity: verify offline/immutable backups exist and have been tested for restoration within RTO targets. The sustained elevated victim volume means any client is a plausible target at short notice.

### P2 — within 72 hours

- Review internet-facing asset inventory for unpatched services. Given the reported sub-day-to-sub-week weaponisation window, prioritise patching of any CVE with public proof-of-concept code or CISA KEV listing. No specific CVEs are named in the source material, but the acceleration trend demands reduced dwell time between disclosure and patch application.
- Audit for exposed credential stores: check for credentials in Git repositories, shared drives, ticketing systems, and cloud metadata that could be harvested for initial access consistent with The Gentlemen's reported methodology.
- Review third-party and supply-chain access points. The widening affiliate base increases the probability of compromise via a less-secured partner. Validate that service-provider access uses MFA and is logged.

### P3 — within 7 days

- Conduct a tabletop exercise simulating a RaaS intrusion with stolen-credential initial access, focusing on lateral movement detection and data-exfiltration prevention. The 51% finance-sector payer rate indicates that incidents frequently reach the encryption/negotiation stage — detection before that point is critical.
- Review and tighten egress filtering to limit data-exfiltration channels. RaaS operations routinely exfiltrate prior to encryption; anomalous outbound data transfers should generate alerts.
- Brief incident response teams on the current threat landscape: the two dominant groups (Qilin, The Gentlemen), their reported initial-access preferences, and the expectation of rapid exploitation of newly disclosed vulnerabilities.

## 5\. Indicators of compromise

No indicators of compromise available in the source material.

### Behavioural indicators

| Behaviour                                                                                  | Where to observe                                                                                         | Confidence                                                                                              |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Authentication using stolen credentials without MFA challenge                              | Identity provider logs, VPN authentication logs, SIEM                                                    | Medium — single-sourced via Trend Micro for The Gentlemen; corroborated by general RaaS trend reporting |
| Rapid weaponisation of newly disclosed vulnerabilities (hours to days)                     | Threat-intel feeds, vulnerability management dashboards, WAF/IPS alert volume for new CVEs               | Medium — reported by Check Point Research; no specific CVEs cited                                       |
| Data exfiltration preceding encryption                                                     | EDR data-loss detection, network egress monitoring, DLP alerts                                           | Medium — inferred from RaaS operational model; not explicitly detailed in sources                       |
| Ransomware management panel built using AI coding assistants (development-stage indicator) | Not directly observable by defenders; relevant to threat-intel assessments of group capability and speed | High — confirmed via internal leak of The Gentlemen's chat logs (Check Point Research)                  |

## 6\. Detection

Insufficient indicators to author detection rules.

The source material describes behavioural patterns (stolen-credential use, rapid vulnerability exploitation) but does not contain specific atomic artefacts — file names, registry keys, mutex names, command-line strings, ransom-note text, or network indicators — that would support a functional YARA or Sigma rule. Authoring rules from the high-level descriptions alone would produce detection logic indistinguishable from generic credential-theft or exploitation alerts already present in standard EDR/SIEM tooling.

## 7\. Sources

- Check Point Research — *The State of Ransomware Q2 2026* — https://research.checkpoint.com/2026/the-state-of-ransomware-q2-2026/ — 2026-08-13
- The Register — *Ransomware attacks spike as world distracted by AI* — https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/ransomware-attacks-spike-as-world-distracted-by-ai/5284934 — 2026-08-07
- DataBreaches.net — *Who Runs the Ransomware Group 'The Gentlemen?'* — https://databreaches.net/2026/06/10/who-runs-the-ransomware-group-the-gentlemen/ — 2026-06-10

## 8\. Adverse Trace position

This is a strategic threat-landscape advisory, not a vulnerability-specific alert. The bottom line for EMEA financial services clients is that ransomware targeting of the financial sector intensified sharply in July 2026 (71% month-over-month increase per Comparitech), with two dominant RaaS operations — Qilin and The Gentlemen — accounting for roughly one-third of all claimed victims. The Gentlemen's reported use of stolen credentials for initial access and Qilin's stated reliance on zero-day exploitation represent two distinct but equally relevant attack vectors; both are mitigable through phishing-resistant MFA, rapid patching of internet-facing services, and robust credential-hygiene programmes. The confirmed use of AI coding assistants to build The Gentlemen's ransomware management panel in approximately three days is a first-party data point that lowers the barrier to entry for new entrants and should inform clients' threat models — expect more groups, faster tooling, and shorter windows between disclosure and exploitation. Attribution for all three named actors (Qilin, The Gentlemen, Krybit) is unconfirmed per the verified reference data (no MITRE ATT&CK profiles). Key claims about The Gentlemen's initial-access methodology are single-sourced (Trend Micro via The Register); verify before enforcing detection rules based on that claim. We will continue monitoring for technical artefacts, specific CVEs being exploited by these groups, and any emergence of Krybit TTPs. Clients should use this advisory to calibrate incident classification severity under DORA Art. 18 and to validate that resilience-testing cadences under DORA Art. 24 are sufficient for the current sub-day weaponisation timeline.

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[Read the original source →](https://research.checkpoint.com/2026/the-state-of-ransomware-q2-2026/?ref=f4n6.co.uk)

*Published via PulseTrace — Adverse Trace threat intelligence.*