Premium
Google investigates mass extortion emails
Google CEO Sundar Pichai attends a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Education in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, September 4, 2025.
Alphabet's Google said hackers are sending extortion emails to an unspecified number of executives from various companies, claiming to have stolen sensitive data from their Oracle business applications.
In a statement, Google said a group claiming affiliation with the ransomware gang cl0p claimed to have stolen sensitive data from their Oracle E-Business Suite." Google described the email campaign as high volume but declined to share further details.
Google cautioned that it "does not currently have sufficient evidence to definitively assess the veracity of these claims."
Messages seeking comment from Oracle were not returned.
Cynthia Kaiser, the head of cybersecurity firm Halcyon's Ransomware Research Center, said her company had seen extortion demands ranging from millions to tens of millions of dollars, with the highest coming in at $50 million (Sh6.5 billion).
Kaiser noted some dispute over the connection to cl0p but said there are early indications that the perpetrators are potentially connected to the group.
"There's so much overlap amongst all these groups, and there are copycats across the ecosystem," Kaiser said.
In an email to Reuters, cl0p said the hackers were "not prepared to discuss details at this time."
