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

March 31, 2023OptionMetrics listed by Karakurton the group's public leak site

Data size: 450 GB

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Construction sector, which has 415 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, OptionMetrics 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

← All victims

OptionMetrics

Claimed by Karakurt · listed 3 years ago

450 GB

Data size

38m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Mar 31, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Karakurt
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Construction
Listed on leak site: Mar 31, 2023
Data size: 450 GB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

OptionMetrics is a U.S.-based financial data provider specializing in historical options and equity data, offering analytics products used by institutional investors, hedge funds, and academic researchers. The company is known for its IvyDB suite of databases covering implied volatility and options pricing data. It operates as a niche quantitative financial data vendor serving capital markets professionals.

Industry: Financial Data & Analytics
Employees: 11-50
Founded: 1999

Attack summary

Severity: critical — 450 GB of confirmed exfiltrated data including financial records, contracts, employee PII, and proprietary databases from a financial data vendor constitutes a critical disclosure; regulated financial and personal data is at stake and the data has been published.

Karakurt claims to have exfiltrated approximately 450 GB of data from OptionMetrics, including financial and accounting data, business contacts, signed contracts, and employee records along with associated databases. The post indicates data has been published, with no mention of encryption.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Financial and accounting data
Business contacts
Signed contracts
Employee information
Internal databases

What the group claims

OptionMetrics provides its customers with databases of various business directions. They have shared some databases with us also. Here is what we got: great amount of financial and accounting data, business contacts, signed contracts, employees information and that DBs as well, of course. In total you can check 450 GB of sweet data.Have fun!

Sources

Leak posthttps://3f7nxkjway3d223j27lyad7v5cgmyaifesycvmwq7i7cbs23lb6llryd.onion/companies/c1f457f9-9c24-4a54-bd41-c73d4d02b41b

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.