Was National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners hit by ransomware?

National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners 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 National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners breach?

Karakurt published data attributed to National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners

Claimed by Karakurt · listed 3 years ago

40m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMar 20, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Karakurt
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Healthcare
Listed on leak site: Mar 20, 2023

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners (NBOME) is an independent, nongovernmental, nonprofit organization founded in 1934 and headquartered in the United States. It is the global leader in assessment for osteopathic medicine, administering the COMLEX-USA licensing examination series and other standardized assessments for osteopathic physicians and related health care professions. It serves osteopathic medical students, residents, colleges, state licensing boards, and partner organizations nationally and internationally.

Industry: Medical Licensing & Examination Services
Employees: 51-200
Founded: 1934

Attack summary

Severity: critical — NBOME holds sensitive PII for osteopathic medical students, residents, and physicians seeking licensure — including examination results, identity data, and potentially health-related professional records. A data_published status from Karakurt (a known exfiltration-focused group) against a medical licensing body constitutes confirmed exfiltration of regulated, sensitive PII at scale affecting a nationally significant healthcare credentialing organization.

Karakurt claims to have exfiltrated data from NBOME, with the disclosure status listed as 'data_published,' indicating stolen data has been released. No specific data volume or encryption activity was described in the leak post.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Candidate/examinee personal data
Medical licensing examination records
Organizational administrative files
Partner and client records
Employee records

What the group claims

The National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners (NBOME) is an independent, nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization. Since their founding in 1934, they have been recognized for excellence in the national and international arenas of osteopathic physician testing and evaluation. NBOME produces a number of osteopathically distinct assessments and partner with other organizations on their assessment programs.

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.

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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

March 20, 2023National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners listed by Karakurton the group's public leak site

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 Healthcare sector, which has 2,600 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners 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 National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners 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.