Was Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC hit by ransomware?

Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC was listed by the nightspire ransomware operation (United States), 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 nightspire ransomware group?

nightspire 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 Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC breach?

nightspire published data attributed to Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC

Claimed by Nightspire · listed 4 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedFeb 20, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Nightspire
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Healthcare
Listed on leak site: Feb 20, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC is a specialized clinical research organization (CRO) based in the Tampa Bay area, located in Lutz, Florida. The organization focuses on neurological studies and is led by Dr. Sadaf Bazargan, a physician with over 20 years of experience. The team collectively holds over 30 years of combined clinical research experience.

Industry: Clinical Research Organization (Neurological Studies)
Address: 217 Crystal Grove Blvd, Lutz, FL 33548

Attack summary

Severity: high — The victim is a healthcare clinical research organization handling neurological patient data, which is inherently sensitive and regulated (HIPAA). Despite the current absence of published proof files, the 'data_published' disclosure status implies exfiltration of potentially sensitive medical and patient research data, warranting a high severity classification.

The Nightspire ransomware group has listed Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC as a victim with a disclosed status of data_published; however, the leak post states that data is not currently available, leaving the scope of exfiltration or encryption unconfirmed at this time.

high

What the group claims

Data is not available for now.

Sources

Victim sitepi-cr.net

Source

Indexed 4 months 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 nightspire

Nightspire is a ransomware group that first emerged in March 2025 and appears to be primarily financially motivated, having targeted over 215 victims in a relatively short operational timeframe. The group's origin and affiliations remain unclear due to limited public documentation from major cybersecurity organizations, though their targeting patterns suggest a broad opportunistic approach rather than nation-state backing. Based on available victim data, Nightspire appears to employ common ransomware attack vectors targeting organizations across multiple sectors, with a particular focus on manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and construction industries, while demonstrating a geographic preference for victims in the United States, India, Taiwan, France, and Hong Kong. The group's rapid victim acquisition rate since their March 2025 emergence suggests an active and potentially effective operational capability, though specific technical details about their attack methodology, encryption techniques, or extortion tactics have not been publicly documented by major threat intelligence firms. Given the recent emergence of this group and limited public reporting from established cybersecurity organizations like CISA, FBI, or Mandiant, Nightspire remains an active threat with insufficient public documentation to fully assess their operational sophistication or organizational structure. The group has been linked to 283 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on March 12, 2025; most recent post June 12, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

February 20, 2026Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC listed by nightspireon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by nightspire

nightspire has been linked to 283 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full nightspire dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Healthcare sector, which has 1,780 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by nightspire means Pearl Institute for Clinical Research LLC 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 nightspire'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.