In Case You Missed It:  H-1B Visas Pricey for Business, Clop Tries to Extort Oracle Customers, Retail Banks Accelerating Digital Transformation

High-priced H-1B visas have sent businesses scrambling while Clop operatives are exploiting Oracle vulnerabilities to pressure customers to pay ransom and Confucius changes its tactics. A new study reveals that retail banks are accelerating their digital transformations.

Clop Operatives Send Extortion Emails to Oracle Customers

While the emails to Oracle customers were filled with broken English, their message was intended to pressure executives to pay ransom or face the public exposure of data the Clop ransomware group had allegedly nicked. CyberScoop was able to view one of the messages and provide details. Though Clop hasn’t publicly claimed responsibility for the demands, Oracle has confirmed that some Oracle E-Business Suite customers have received the extortion emails. The company said an investigation shows that vulnerabilities, which were patched in July, have been exploited.

Sensitive Data Nicked from FEMA, CBC in Summer Hack

A “widespread” breach at FEMA in the summer rolled out over the course of many weeks and resulted in employees’ data at the agency and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) being stolen by an unknown hacker. Two dozen FEMA workers lost their jobs over the incident. An internal FEMA assessment documented the attack and data theft, CNN said, despite Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claiming “no sensitive data was extracted from any DHS networks.”

H-1B Visa Fees Costly to Business

American businesses, particularly in tech, now face the near certainty of sharply higher costs for bringing highly skilled workers to the United States, after President Trump abruptly announced a $100,000 fee for each H-1B visa. The Trump administration says the move will provide certainty to companies that want to bring high-skilled workers to the United States. But uncertainty still swirls around the action. Economists and business leaders argue that instead of bringing more jobs onshore and improving competitiveness, the new fee structure could have the opposite effect.

Executives Are Reconsidering Marketing Capabilities Within Banking Platforms

Retail banks are accelerating digital transformation, with most leaders increasing infrastructure budgets and nearly all operating in the cloud. Executives say AI is essential to new services and better customer experiences, which is pushing investment in platforms, data, and APIs.  Essentially all banks are in the cloud with about 40 percent saying they run over 75 percent of their operations in the cloud. Many are upping their investment technology infrastructure in an effort to underpin both near-term priorities and long-term transformation goals, according to the 2025 State of Digital Banking Transformation in Retail Banking survey conducted in April 2025 by TechStudio^TM, an Energize Marketing^® company, in partnership with FIS^®. The study found more than two-thirds (68 percent) plan to increase their spending on tech infrastructure this year while the remaining cohort will maintain current spend levels.

Confucius Threat Group Switches Tactics, Deploys Backdoors

The Confucius threat group has changed its tactics—now installing backdoors rather infostealer malware, a shift marked by the deployment in August of AnonDoor, a backdoor based on Python. And a Fortinet report, detailing the gang’s evolution since its inception in 2013, explains it now favors emails with LNK attachments over the PowerPoint lures it originally used.