Hacking group claims major hack of Novo Nordisk and attempted $32 million extortion

Novo Nordisk is known for its treatments for obesity and diabetes, notably Wegovy and Ozempic.

COPENHAGEN – A cyber extortion group claimed on June 16 to have stolen more than a terabyte of data from pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk and said it is exploring selling parts of the data after unsuccessfully demanding US$25 million (S$32 million) from the company.

FulcrumSec, a cyber extortion group that emerged in October 2025, said in a long message posted to its website that it spent more than two months in Novo Nordisk’s networks stealing data. It said that data included company source code, proprietary information on released and unreleased drugs, trial data, employee, doctor and patient data, information related to company processing facilities and internal AI model information.

A Novo Nordisk spokesperson said in an email that the company “is aware of claims that data allegedly copied externally without authorisation from our systems has been published online. We take this matter seriously and maintain continued operations of our main platforms. We are in contact with the relevant authorities”.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the data posted by the hacking group.

FulcrumSec told Reuters in an email that Novo Nordisk representatives contacted the group on June 3, roughly 48 hours after the group’s initial contact to unnamed company executives. The company used a random Proton Mail email address sent to email addresses that FulcrumSec used in its initial outreach, and confirmed it was the company by requesting specific files for verification only the company would know about.

The FulcrumSec representative also said that the group would prefer not to sell data, “as open sourcing it is a more effective deterrent for future companies to avoid paying”.

The Danish company disclosed a cybersecurity incident on June 11 that it said involved unauthorised access to a limited number of internal IT systems that included access to certain personal data.

FulcrumSec said that after Novo Nordisk refused to pay $25 million, it was “exploring private sales” for some of the data related to certain drugs and other internal data.

FulcrumSec said it would not share some of the data it stole, including information on thousands of company employees and physicians, and roughly 11,500 pseudonymised clinical trial patients.

The group said it also would withhold data related to operational technology and software used to interact with sensors and machinery at Novo Nordisk production facilities as part of its “harm-reduction strategy”.

DataBreac