The Gentlemen (Storm-2697) claims OT-adjacent Mackay Sugar attack; operator attributed to a Russian national

UPDATE (originally covered 2026-06-19): Following ESET's 2026-06-19 documentation of the group's GentleKiller EDR-killer framework, The Gentlemen ransomware group has claimed an OT-adjacent attack on Mackay Sugar (Australia's second-largest sugar producer), which confirmed on 2026-06-18 that an external party accessed its IT environment around 10 June, halting milling at two of three mills (The Record, 2026-06-18).

Separately, KrebsOnSecurity reported OSINT attribution identifying the group's administrator — operating as "Hastalamuerte" / "Zeta88" — as Alexander Andreevich Yapaev, a 36-year-old from Izhevsk, Russia, cross-matched across ProtonMail addresses, Telegram IDs and Russian breach corpora (KrebsOnSecurity, 2026-06-10). Krebs reports the administrator uses AI tooling to develop ransomware and assist post-exploitation. The attribution is Krebs's analytical claim, not a confirmed indictment; for defenders the operational signal remains the group's 90%-affiliate RaaS model and its BYOVD EDR-kill tradecraft documented on 2026-06-19.