Was COSI hit by ransomware?

COSI was listed by the Karakurt ransomware operation (United States), 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 Karakurt ransomware group?

Karakurt 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 COSI breach?

Karakurt published data attributed to COSI (~75 GB). Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

← All victims

Center of Science and Industry (COSI)

listed as COSI · Claimed by Karakurt · listed 3 years ago

75 GB

Data size

35m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 2, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Karakurt
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Aug 2, 2023
Data size: 75 GB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

COSI (Center of Science and Industry) is a nonprofit science museum located in Columbus, Ohio, recognized as the #1 Best Science Museum by USA TODAY 10Best Readers' Choice Awards multiple times. The organization operates interactive exhibits, educational programs, a planetarium, and community outreach initiatives aimed at inspiring learning in science, technology, and industry. COSI serves individual visitors, school groups, corporate sponsors, and donors, and runs membership and ticketing programs.

Industry: Science Museum & Informal Education
Address: 333 W Broad St, Columbus, Ohio 43215, United States
Employees: 201-500
Founded: 1964

Attack summary

Severity: high — 75 GB of confirmed exfiltrated data includes PII for clients, partners, and employees, financial and accounting records, confidential contracts, and donor information. While not a government or medical entity, the breadth and sensitivity of the data — especially employee PII and financial records — combined with the impending public release elevates this to high severity.

Karakurt claims to have exfiltrated approximately 75 GB of data from COSI, including project information, accounting and financial documents, confidential contracts, client and donor contact information, and databases containing client, partner, and employee records, transactions, and correspondence. The group states the data has not yet been released but signals an impending publication.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Project information
Accounting and financial documents
Contracts (including confidential)
Client contact information
Donations information
Client databases
Partner databases
Employee data
Transaction records
Internal correspondence

What the group claims

COSI, Columbus, Ohio's dynamic Center of Science and Industry, inspires the scientists, dreamers, and innovators of tomorrow. We've taken about 75GBs of data from this organization. You will find there their projects information, lots of accounting and financial documents, contracts (some of them are confidential), clients contacts, donations information an so on. There are also databases containing clients, partners and employee data, transactions and correspondence. Wait for the release.

Sources

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.

Is this your supplier? Your competitor? You?

Pro plans monitor your domain, corporate emails, and crypto wallets across every new ransomware leak-site post, breach dump and Telegram callout — alerts within 5 minutes.

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

August 2, 2023COSI listed by Karakurton the group's public leak site

Data size: 75 GB

Other recent disclosures by Karakurt

Karakurt has been linked to 74 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Karakurt dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,082 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, COSI is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Karakurt means COSI 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, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Karakurt'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.