Was Medical University of the Americas hit by ransomware?

Medical University of the Americas was listed by the Nokoyawa ransomware operation (Canada), 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 Nokoyawa ransomware group?

Nokoyawa 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 Medical University of the Americas breach?

Nokoyawa published data attributed to Medical University of the Americas. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Medical University of the Americas

Claimed by Nokoyawa · listed 3 years ago

38m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 23, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Nokoyawa
Status: Data leaked
Country: Canada
Sector: Healthcare
Listed on leak site: May 23, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Medical University of the Americas (MUA) is a private, for-profit offshore medical school located in Charlestown, Nevis, owned by R3 Education, Inc. It offers MD and pre-medical programs primarily to students from the US and Canada, with basic science coursework on the Nevis campus and clinical rotations in North America. MUA has been operating for over 25 years and holds accreditation from the Accreditation Commission on Colleges of Medicine (ACCM).

Industry: Medical Education (Offshore Medical School)
Address: Charlestown, Nevis, Saint Kitts and Nevis

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a medical university handling regulated PII at scale, including student academic, financial aid, and admissions records for US and Canadian nationals; data has been confirmed published by the threat actor, indicating successful exfiltration of sensitive personal and potentially financial data.

The Nokoyawa ransomware group claims to have attacked Medical University of the Americas and has published data as part of a disclosed leak, indicating exfiltration of institutional data; the post does not specify encryption or the precise volume of data exfiltrated.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student records
Faculty and administration data
Financial aid and tuition records
Admissions records
Academic records

What the group claims

Medical University of the Americas (MUA) is a private for-profit offshore medical school in Charlestown, Nevis. It is owned by R3 Education, Inc. which also owns St. Matthew's University and the Saba University School of Medicine Students at MUA are primarily from the US and Canada and return to...

Sources

Victim sitemua.edu
Leak posthttp://nokoleakb76znymx443veg4n6fytx6spck6pc7nkr4dvfuygpub6jsid.onion/leak/6468c01286dfec2c80d2e02b

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 Nokoyawa

Nokoyawa is a ransomware group that emerged in December 2022, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors including healthcare, non-profit, education, finance, and energy. The group has claimed at least 36 victims since its emergence, with attacks predominantly focused on the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and the Philippines. While detailed technical analysis of Nokoyawa's operations remains limited in public reporting, the group appears to follow conventional ransomware tactics targeting critical infrastructure and essential services sectors. Their targeting of healthcare and educational institutions suggests they operate without the sector restrictions that some other ransomware groups have adopted. Notable campaigns include attacks across their preferred geographic regions, though specific high-profile incidents have not been extensively documented in public threat intelligence reporting from major security firms. As of current reporting, Nokoyawa appears to remain an active threat, though the group's relatively recent emergence means long-term operational patterns and potential law enforcement disruption efforts are still developing. The group has been linked to 36 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 9, 2022; most recent post August 4, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 23, 2023Medical University of the Americas listed by Nokoyawaon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Nokoyawa

Nokoyawa has been linked to 36 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Nokoyawa dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Healthcare sector, which has 2,600 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Medical University of the Americas is reported in Canada, a country with 1,055 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Nokoyawa means Medical University of the Americas 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, CCCS (Canada), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Nokoyawa'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.