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

June 26, 2023Reeds Spring School District listed by Karakurton the group's public leak site

Data size: 155 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, Reeds Spring School District 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

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Reeds Spring School District

Claimed by Karakurt · listed 3 years ago

155 GB

Data size

35m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Jun 26, 2023
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: Karakurt
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Education
Listed on leak site: Jun 26, 2023
Data size: 155 GB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Reeds Spring School District is a public K-12 school district located in Reeds Spring, Missouri, operating under the Missouri public education system. It includes Gibson Technical Center, a career and technical education (CTE) school serving students in the district. The district provides primary and secondary education services to the local community in Stone County, Missouri.

Industry: K-12 Public Education

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The exfiltration includes confidential student PII at scale, student medical records (likely FERPA- and HIPAA-adjacent protected data), and employee personal/contract data — constituting regulated sensitive data affecting minors from a public educational institution, with 155 GB already claimed stolen and publication threatened.

Karakurt claims to have exfiltrated 155 GB of data from the Reeds Spring School District's network, including sensitive HR, financial, employee, and student records; the group states the data will be published in upcoming summer leaks.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

HR records
Finance and accounting documents
Employee information and contracts
Confidential student information
Student medical documents
Student databases

What the group claims

Gibson Technical Center is a career and technical education school that is part of the Reeds Spring School District. 155GB have been stolen from their network. You can find there: HR, detailed finance and accounting, employee information and contracts, confidential students information including medical documents, databases with complete students information. The data will be uploaded during upcoming summer leaks.

Sources

Victim siterssd.k12.mo.us

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.