European Space Agency’s External Servers Compromised: Breach Confirmed

The European Space Agency Confirms Recent Cybersecurity Breach

The European Space Agency (ESA) has acknowledged a security breach that occurred on servers outside its corporate network, compromising “unclassified” data related to collaborative engineering projects.

Established half a century ago and headquartered in Paris, ESA is an intergovernmental organization overseeing space endeavors for 23 member states. With a staff of approximately 3000 individuals, the agency operated on a budget of €7.68 billion ($9 billion) in 2025.

Following claims by a threat actor on the BreachForums hacking platform, ESA released a statement confirming the breach.

The threat actor also provided evidence of accessing ESA’s JIRA and Bitbucket servers for a week, leaking screenshots as proof.

ESA disclosed, “We are aware of a recent cybersecurity incident involving external servers. Our ongoing forensic analysis has been initiated, along with security measures to safeguard affected devices.”

“Preliminary assessments suggest a minimal number of external servers might be impacted, supporting unclassified collaborative engineering tasks within the scientific community,” ESA added.

ESA has informed relevant stakeholders about the breach and promised updates as more details emerge.

While specifics of the breached servers were not disclosed by ESA, the threat actors boasted about stealing over 200GB of data, including source code, confidential documents, and various credentials.

The attackers claimed to have accessed private Bitbucket repositories and disclosed their data haul, which comprised sensitive information.

ESA representatives were unavailable for immediate comments on the breach.

This incident is not the first security breach ESA has faced in recent times.

A year earlier, the agency’s official web shop was compromised, with malicious code inserted to pilfer customer data and payment details during transactions.

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