FBI investigates cyberattack at Oracle, patient records breached

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is probing the cyberattack at Oracle as the hackers broke into the cloud computing company's computer systems and stole patient data, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Earlier this month, the company alerted some healthcare customers that sometime after January 22, hackers accessed its servers and copied patient data to an outside location, the report said.

The hackers stole patient data in an attempt to extort multiple medical providers in the United States, according to the report.

Oracle and the FBI did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

The report said that the number of patient records breached and the healthcare providers targeted by the hackers were unknown.

Austin, Texas-based Oracle acquired the US healthcare IT company Cerner Corp for $28 billion in 2022, which bolstered the company's involvement in the Electronic Health Record sector and likely increased the number of healthcare clients on its cloud platform.

The purchase came along with a flagship $16 billion contract with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which has seen highly publicized outages and lawmaker scrutiny, according to the report.

The company told customers that the hackers accessed older Cerner servers, taking data that had not yet been shifted to Oracle's cloud storage service, the report said, citing a notice.

"Available evidence suggests the threat actor illegally accessed the environment by using stolen customer credentials," the company said in the notice.

Oracle said it became aware of the breach around February 20, the report said.