Mercado Libre Hit by Ransomware Attack as The Gentlemen Expands Targets Latin America’s leading e-commerce platform, Mercado Libre, has been listed as a victim of The Gentlemen, a prolific ransomware group active in 2026. The threat actor added the Argentine company to its dark web leak site, though it has not disclosed the nature of the stolen data or the attack vector. Despite the breach claim, MercadoLibre.com remains operational with no visible disruptions. Founded in 1997 by Marcos Galperin, the company serves millions across 18 Latin American countries, offering e-commerce, digital payments (Mercado Pago), and logistics (Mercado Envíos). With nearly 85,000 employees, it is a critical player in the region’s digital economy. The Gentlemen has rapidly escalated its operations this year, recently targeting Indra, a Spanish tech conglomerate, by breaching one of its subsidiaries. While Indra contained the incident, the group’s strategy focuses on high-value Western organizations in sectors like ICT, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, and logistics, pressuring victims to pay to avoid legal, operational, or reputational fallout. Security researchers estimate the group has compromised over 300 victims globally in 2026 alone, underscoring its growing threat to enterprises. Mercado Libre has yet to confirm the extent of the breach or its response.

Argentinian e-commerce giant Mercado Libre recently suffered a data breach incident initiated by the Lapsus$ hacker group. Its source code was compromised to unauthorized access that leaked around 300,000 of its users. The company immediately activated security protocols and started the investigation.