Was Instituto de Ojos hit by ransomware?

Instituto de Ojos was listed by the killsec ransomware operation (Argentina), 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 killsec ransomware group?

killsec 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 Instituto de Ojos breach?

killsec published data attributed to Instituto de Ojos. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Instituto de Ojos

Claimed by Killsec · listed 1 year ago

16m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 20, 2025
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Killsec
Status: Data leaked
Country: Argentina
Sector: Healthcare
Listed on leak site: Mar 20, 2025

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Instituto de Ojos is an ophthalmology practice specializing in eye surgery and vision correction. Led by Dr. Santiago with over 50,000 successful surgeries, the practice offers services including general ophthalmology, retina treatment, glaucoma management, oculoplastics, refractive surgery, and cataract surgery. The organization operates in Puerto Rico (based on the .com domain and Spanish-language site).

Industry: Healthcare - Ophthalmology

Attack summary

Severity: high — Healthcare provider with patient data; medical records and PII exposure at a medical facility constitutes regulated sensitive data. Confirmed data publication status elevates to high despite lack of detailed proof count.

The killsec group claims to have attacked Instituto de Ojos and published data; however, no specific details about the attack methodology (encryption, exfiltration, or both) or affected data categories are provided in the available leak post excerpt.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Patient medical records
Personal identifiable information
Financial/insurance information

What the group claims

N/A

Sources

Source

Indexed 1 year 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 killsec

killsec is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in March 2024, operating with apparent financial motivations and demonstrating broad targeting across multiple geographic regions and industry sectors. The group's origin and potential state affiliations remain unclear due to limited public documentation from major threat intelligence sources, though their targeting pattern suggests opportunistic rather than geopolitically motivated operations. With 276 documented victims primarily concentrated in the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Belgium, killsec appears to focus heavily on healthcare, technology, business services, and financial sectors, indicating either specific tooling designed for these environments or opportunistic targeting of organizations with valuable data and high pressure to restore operations quickly. Given the group's recent emergence and the lack of detailed technical analysis from established cybersecurity firms like Mandiant or law enforcement advisories from CISA or FBI, specific details about their attack methodology, initial access vectors, encryption techniques, and extortion tactics have not been publicly documented in authoritative sources. The group remains active as of current reporting, though the limited intelligence profile suggests they may be either a smaller operation or one that has not yet attracted significant attention from major threat intelligence organizations despite their substantial victim count. The group has been linked to 281 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on March 21, 2024; most recent post June 3, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

March 20, 2025Instituto de Ojos listed by killsecon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by killsec

killsec has been linked to 281 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full killsec 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, Instituto de Ojos is reported in Argentina, a country with 29 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by killsec means Instituto de Ojos 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.
Monitor for the data appearing on killsec'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.