Was PESSI hit by ransomware?

PESSI was listed by the Darkrace ransomware operation (Philippines), and stolen data was published on the group's leak site. Darkfield tracks this disclosure with the original leak post, screenshot and group context.

Who is the Darkrace ransomware group?

Darkrace is a ransomware operator tracked by Darkfield. See the full operator dossier for its known victims, sectors targeted, IOCs and leak-site infrastructure.

What data was leaked in the PESSI breach?

Darkrace published data attributed to PESSI. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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PESSI

Claimed by Darkrace · listed 3 years ago

37m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJun 3, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Darkrace
Status: Data leaked
Country: Philippines
Sector: Insurance
Listed on leak site: Jun 3, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

PESSI (Punjab Employees Social Security Institution or a similarly named provincial social security body in the Philippines/Pakistan region) is a public-sector institution committed to providing comprehensive medical coverage and cash benefits to workers and their dependents in partnership with employers. It serves a low-income and working-class clientele, functioning as a state-backed social security and health insurance provider. The organisation emphasises transparency, fairness, and broad coverage for secured workers and their families.

Industry: Government Social Insurance & Workers' Benefits

Attack summary

Severity: critical — PESSI is a social security/health insurance institution holding large volumes of regulated PII including medical coverage data, benefit records, and personal information of low-income workers and their dependents — constituting sensitive health and financial data at scale for a vulnerable population. Data has been published.

Darkrace claims to have exfiltrated data from PESSI and has published it (disclosed status: data_published); the leak post describes the organisation but does not specify the exact data types or volume exfiltrated beyond the implication of internal records relating to workers, dependents, and employers.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Worker personal records
Dependent and beneficiary records
Employer partnership data
Medical coverage records
Cash benefit claim records

What the group claims

PESSI is committed to provide services and benefits to workers and their dependents in close partnership with the employers. By bringing transparency and ensuring fairness to its business processes, PESSI's noble task of providing comprehensive medical coverage and a number of cash benefits to its secured clientele comprising of downtrodden workers and their dependents including parents is expected to significantly enhance the coverage and scope of its services. PESSI is indeed a partner in enhancing productivity of businesses by providing security and peace of mind to workers. May Allah give us strength to standby our commitments.

Sources

Leak posthttp://wkrlpub5k52rjigwxfm6m7ogid55kamgc5azxlq7zjgaopv33tgx2sqd.onion/ea959dacf850/

Source

Indexed 3 years ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

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Disclosure context

About Darkrace

Darkrace is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in May 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations through targeted extortion campaigns. The group demonstrates a preference for targeting European nations, particularly Italy, Sweden, and Portugal, while also conducting operations against victims in Japan and Switzerland, suggesting a broad international scope despite their limited scale of operations. With only 10 documented victims since their emergence, Darkrace appears to operate as a smaller, independent ransomware operation rather than a large-scale Ransomware-as-a-Service enterprise, though specific details regarding their country of origin and potential affiliations with other cybercriminal groups remain undocumented in public threat intelligence reporting. Due to the limited public documentation from major cybersecurity firms and law enforcement agencies regarding Darkrace's specific attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and initial access vectors, their operational tactics and technical capabilities are not well-established in current threat intelligence databases. The group has not been associated with any major, high-profile ransomware incidents that have drawn significant public attention or law enforcement response, likely due to their relatively small victim count and recent emergence in the threat landscape. Current intelligence suggests Darkrace remains active as of late 2023, though their limited operational footprint and absence from major cybersecurity advisories indicates they represent a lower-tier threat compared to more established ransomware operations. The group has been linked to 10 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on May 31, 2023; most recent post June 9, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

June 3, 2023PESSI listed by Darkraceon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Darkrace

Darkrace has been linked to 10 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Darkrace dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Insurance sector, which has 53 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, PESSI is reported in Philippines, a country with 28 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Darkrace means PESSI appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
Monitor for the data appearing on Darkrace's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.