Novo Nordisk breach included theft of internal AI model assets
What happened
Novo Nordisk disclosed that attackers accessed internal systems and copied non-public data, including pseudonymised clinical trial data and internal AI model assets. The group claiming responsibility said it entered through a GitHub access token and took 1.3 TB; Novo reportedly refused a ransom demand.
The extortion group FulcrumSec says it got in during March using exposed credentials, including a GitHub personal access token, and spent more than two months inside Novo Nordisk's systems, cloning private code repositories and harvesting further credentials. It claims to have taken 1.3 TB across more than 700,000 files, including 30 trained AI models, 70 datasets, around 494 GB of cell microscopy images used in drug research, clinical trial information and login screenshots. Novo Nordisk has confirmed access to a limited number of internal systems and exposure of pseudonymised clinical trial data not directly linked to names, but has not validated the rest of the group's claims.
How it happened
Supply chain and access: Stolen token or key. Stolen or leaked access tokens, API keys or passwords were used to get in.
Sources do not say whose AI model was involved. The product type was AI building block.
Impact
Data was exposed. Data involved: health, model weights and internal documents. The impact was confined to one organization and its users or customers.
Severity is rated High, calculated from how far the incident reached and how sensitive the data was.
Was the AI at fault?
No. The failure was in the systems, settings or people around the AI, not in the model's behaviour.
Status and timeline
Confirmed by the affected organization, the AI vendor, a regulator or a named security research firm.
It became public on 11 Jun 2026.
Novo Nordisk disclosed the incident on 11 June, said it was working with authorities and that core operations were unaffected, and refused a reported 25 million dollar ransom demand. The group began posting samples of the data on 15 June.