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

May 15, 2023York County School of Technology listed by Karakurton the group's public leak site

Data size: 368 GB

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 694 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, York County School of Technology 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

York County School of Technology

Claimed by Karakurt · listed 3 years ago

368 GB

Data size

36m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
May 15, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Karakurt
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: May 15, 2023
Data size: 368 GB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

York County School of Technology is a public vocational-technical school located in York County, Pennsylvania, United States. It provides career and technical education programs to students, guiding them toward their full potential across a range of trades and professional disciplines. The institution serves both secondary students and adult learners in the region.

Industry: Vocational & Technical Education

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The exfiltration involves SSNs and State Secure IDs of minors (students) at scale alongside employee PII, constituting regulated sensitive data (FERPA-protected student records, PII) totalling 368 GB, with publication explicitly threatened.

Karakurt claims to have exfiltrated approximately 368 GB of data from York County School of Technology and states the data will be published. The stolen data allegedly includes student IDs, State Secure IDs, Social Security Numbers, home addresses, employee information, incident reports, government correspondence, and accounting documents.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Student IDs
State Secure IDs
Social Security Numbers (SSNs)
Student home addresses
Employee personal information
Incident reports
Government correspondence
Accounting documents

What the group claims

York County School of Technology offers educational opportunities where every student is guided and encouraged to reach his or her full potential. Nearly 368GB of their data will be shared this week. Students' IDs, State Secure IDs, SSNs, addresses, same employee's information, incidents reports, correspondence with government, accounting documents and many other. Stay 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.