European Space Agency Confirms Breach After Hacker Offers to Sell Data

The European Space Agency has confirmed that some of its systems were breached and that external science servers have been compromised, with the agency conducting a forensic investigation and securing affected devices. According to SecurityWeek, the ESA stated that only a very small number of external servers may have been impacted and that these servers support unclassified collaborative engineering activities within the scientific community.

The breach followed a claim by the hacker with the moniker ‘888’ that they hacked ESA systems on 18 December and offered to sell 200 GB of data, including files from private Bitbucket repositories. The threat actor says they obtained source code, API and access tokens, configuration files, credentials and confidential documents, and several screenshots have been made public to illustrate the claims.

The update notes that the ESA has informed all relevant stakeholders and will provide further information as it becomes available, with the report published on 31 December 2025.