Disclosure context

About Karakurt

Karakurt is a ransomware group that emerged in December 2022, operating primarily as a data extortion threat actor with financial motivations rather than traditional file encryption. The group's origin and affiliations remain largely undocumented by major cybersecurity agencies, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent entity rather than a confirmed ransomware-as-a-service operation. Karakurt employs data theft and extortion tactics, focusing on exfiltrating sensitive information from victim networks before demanding payment under threat of public disclosure, representing a pure extortion model that bypasses traditional encryption-based ransomware approaches. The group has targeted 74 known victims across multiple sectors, with particular focus on healthcare, education, manufacturing, energy, and professional services organizations, primarily affecting entities in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, and India. Based on available reporting from established cybersecurity agencies and researchers, Karakurt appears to remain active as of recent assessments, though comprehensive intelligence on their specific attack vectors, tools, and major campaigns remains limited in publicly documented sources from CISA, FBI, and major security research organizations. The group has been linked to 74 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 11, 2022; most recent post September 22, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

April 24, 2023Lifeline Vascular Access listed by Karakurton the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Healthcare sector, which has 1,779 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Lifeline Vascular Access is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

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.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Lifeline Vascular Access

Claimed by Karakurt · listed 3 years ago

37m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Apr 24, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Karakurt
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Healthcare
Listed on leak site: Apr 24, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Lifeline Vascular Access provides management services for outpatient vascular centers in the United States, streamlining the delivery of patient care by consolidating the operational components of vascular access facilities. The company serves patients requiring vascular care and supports the clinical and administrative functions of its affiliated centers. It operates within the healthcare sector, handling sensitive patient medical and financial records.

Industry: Outpatient Vascular Care Management Services

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The group claims confirmed exfiltration of regulated healthcare data at scale — patient PII, medical records, and financial information — constituting a HIPAA-covered breach of sensitive protected health information, with imminent threatened public disclosure.

Karakurt claims to have exfiltrated hundreds of patient medical records containing personal, health, and financial information, as well as personal data belonging to doctors and other staff members, with threatened public publication of the data.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Patient medical records
Patient personal information
Patient financial information
Employee personal data
Physician personal data

What the group claims

Lifeline Vascular Access provides management services that streamline the delivery of patient care, bringing together all the pieces essential to the operation of an outpatient vascular center. Keeping a patient's personal information in secret is not very popular today. Lifeline thinks the same and has provided us with hundreds of their patients' medical records. Detailed information about the patients, their health, finance state and other info can be published soon and be accessible for everyone. Employees' data is not an exception. Doctors and other staff have lost their personal information thanks to Lifeline Vascular management. Be in touch!

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.