Was Ananda Temple hit by ransomware?

Ananda Temple was listed by the Losttrust 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 Losttrust ransomware group?

Losttrust 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 Ananda Temple breach?

Losttrust published data attributed to Ananda Temple. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Ananda (Ananda Church of Self-Realization / Ananda Sangha)

listed as Ananda Temple · Claimed by Losttrust · listed 3 years ago

34m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedSep 26, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Losttrust
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Non-Profit
Listed on leak site: Sep 26, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Ananda is a worldwide spiritual movement founded in 1968 by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda), based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. It operates 6 residential communities, 45 teaching centers, and 102 meditation groups globally, offering meditation instruction, Kriya Yoga training, online courses, retreats, and yoga teacher training. The organization is non-profit and mission-driven around consciousness, inner joy, and spiritual growth.

Industry: Spiritual & Meditation Non-Profit Organization
Founded: 1968

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published by the group, indicating confirmed exfiltration. As a global spiritual organization with members, donors, students, and online account holders, the exposed data likely includes PII (names, contact details, payment/donation records, course enrollment data), elevating severity beyond medium despite no explicit data inventory being stated.

The Losttrust ransomware group claims to have attacked Ananda and has published data (disclosed status: data_published); the leak post does not specify whether encryption, exfiltration, or both occurred, nor does it detail the volume or type of data exposed.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Organizational records
Member/donor information
Financial records (potential)
Course/student data (potential)

What the group claims

Ananda is a worldwide group of individuals who share the search for higher consciousness and the ideal of service to others. We express this service by modeling uplifting values and sharing techniques for achieving peace of mind and inner happiness. Ananda, which means "joy" in Sanskrit, was founded in 1968 by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) to support others in their quest for spiritual growth.

Sources

Victim siteananda.org

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 Losttrust

Losttrust is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in September 2023, operating with apparent financial motivations and demonstrating a broad international targeting scope across multiple sectors. The group's origin and affiliations remain largely undocumented by major threat intelligence organizations, with limited public reporting from established security firms regarding their operational structure or potential ransomware-as-a-service connections. Based on available victim data, Losttrust appears to employ opportunistic targeting methods, having compromised 53 known victims across diverse geographic regions including the United States, Italy, Germany, Argentina, and India, with particular focus on education, legal services, media organizations, food and agriculture companies, and government entities. The specific attack methodologies, initial access vectors, encryption techniques, and extortion tactics employed by Losttrust have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reports from major security vendors or law enforcement agencies. Given the group's recent emergence and limited visibility in established threat intelligence channels, their current operational status and activity levels remain unclear, though the breadth of their reported victim base suggests ongoing operations as of recent observations. The group has been linked to 53 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 26, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: LOST TRUST.

Timeline of this disclosure

September 26, 2023Ananda Temple listed by Losttruston the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Losttrust

Losttrust has been linked to 53 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Losttrust dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Non-Profit sector, which has 45 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Ananda Temple is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Losttrust means Ananda Temple 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.
Report the incident to your national CERT, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Losttrust'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.