- Cl0p ransomware exploited Oracle E-Business Suite, demanding payment from affected organizations
- Google says attacks began in July–August, before Oracle released a patch for the zero-day
- FIN11 may be involved, either collaborating with Cl0p or inspiring the extortion campaign
The recent Oracle E-Business Suite cyberattack may have affected dozens of organizations around the world, as Google’s researchers shed more light on the currently active extortion campaign.
News recently broke of numerous executives across American organizations receiving emails apparently originating from the Cl0p ransomware gang. In the emails, the miscreants said they stole sensitive files from the company’s Oracle E-Business Suite systems and asked for payment in exchange for deleting the files.
Initial reports suggested that the campaign may have been a bluff, but a few days later Oracle released a patch, addressing a zero-day vulnerability.
FIN11 and Cl0p
Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has now published a new report saying the attacks likely started in the first half of August 2025, “weeks before a patch was available”. There are also indications that some attacks happened in early July, too.
“In some cases, the threat actor successfully exfiltrated a significant amount of data from impacted organizations,” Google said.
The researchers seem to be a bit confused about who is actually behind this campaign. While the ransom note clearly states that Cl0p is behind it – there is evidence pointing to the involvement of a separate financially motivated group called FIN11.
“The pattern of exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in a widely used enterprise application, followed by a large-scale, branded extortion campaign weeks later, is a hallmark of activity historically attributed to FIN11 that has strategic benefits which may also appeal to other threat actors,” GTIG said in its report.
It could be a couple of things: either Cl0p is working together with FIN11 on this, sharing tactics, techniques, and procedures, or it just rented out its infrastructure for the campaign. There is also a possibility that FIN11’s methodology served as an inspiration for the infamous ransomware collective.
The actual number of the victims is not yet known.
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