European Space Agency confirms breach of “external servers”

On 2 January 2026, the European Space Agency confirmed that attackers recently breached servers outside its corporate network, which contained what it described as “unclassified” information on collaborative engineering activities. Founded 50 years ago and headquartered in Paris, ESA is an intergovernmental organisation that coordinates the space activities of 23 member states, with around 3000 staff and a budget of €7.68 billion ($9 billion) in 2025.

The agency issued a statement confirming the breach following claims by a threat actor on the BreachForums hacking forum that they had breached some of ESA’s servers. The confirmation notes that the compromised servers were external to its main network. This sequence of events indicates the incident was publicly acknowledged after the forum claims, rather than solely through internal disclosure.