American Color Imaging restored production July 1 after a weeklong systems outage delayed orders and customer communications at the professional photo lab in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
The company described the disruption as a temporary systems outage in public updates beginning June 24. It did not identify a cause or characterize the outage as a cyberattack.
American Color Imaging provides printing and related services to professional photographers from its Cedar Falls operations.
A post on the Settra ransomware group’s leak site lists American Color Imaging’s acilab.com domain as a victim and says additional material will be published after a countdown expires.
Settra claims it obtained 653 gigabytes of data, including financial and payroll records, information about photography studios and confidential documents belonging to a third party. The group says the archive spans multiple years and contains information involving thousands of ACI clients.
The post includes screenshots of documents that Settra presents as evidence of an intrusion. The group’s claims have not been independently verified.
Settra is a recently emerged extortion group first tracked publicly in June. WatchGuard classifies it as a data broker using direct and double-extortion tactics and had recorded 11 known victims. Arete identified Settra among several new threat actors that emerged that month.
Public reporting indicates Settra emphasizes data theft and threatened publication. Encryption has not been confirmed through public malware analysis, and no established connection to an older ransomware operation has been publicly documented.
American Color Imaging said June 24 that the outage affected ACI and its Background Town division. Customers could continue submitting orders, but the company warned that communications could be delayed.
The company said June 26 that it was still accepting orders, but production remained paused, submitted work was being held and one ordering platform was offline while restoration continued.
Updates June 29 and June 30 said restoration was progressing, with the company continuing to accept orders and expecting production to resume soon.
American Color Imaging said July 1 that production was fully operational. Its updates indicate the disruption affected production, order processing, customer communications and an online ordering platform for about one week.
The company previously reported a cybersecurity incident in May 2025. No connection to the June 2026 outage has been established.
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Other printing operations have faced similar disruptions followed by cyber disclosures or claims. Utah’s Standard-Examiner reported print-delivery delays before the Qilin ransomware group claimed the newspaper, while ransomware at New Jersey-based Evergreen Printing disrupted newspaper mailings.
American Color Imaging has not confirmed Settra’s claim, and no law enforcement agency or regulator has publicly linked the group to the outage.
Settra says the disruption involved unauthorized access and data theft, but American Color Imaging has not confirmed either claim or disclosed whether systems were encrypted. The company also has not said whether a ransom was demanded or paid, or whether customers, employees or others will receive breach notifications.
DysruptionHub contacted American Color Imaging for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
