Officials at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo have brought in international cybersecurity experts to investigate a possible case of espionage. They suspect that someone may have gained

access to confidential information about this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner before the announcement was made.

The concern arose after betting odds for Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado—who went on to win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize—skyrocketed the night before the official reveal.

Normally, discussions inside the Nobel Committee are kept under tight wraps. The committee’s deliberations are famously secret, and leaks are virtually unheard of. But this year, something seems to have slipped out.

“We’ve started an investigation,” said Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Nobel Institute, in an interview with NTB over the weekend. “We don’t have a large IT department here, so we’ve already brought in external experts to assist us.”

Machado was recognized for her efforts to restore democracy and free elections in Venezuela. Her victory surprised many observers—her name had barely surfaced in the usual speculation, and her betting odds were reportedly as low as 3 percent, according to Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).

Then, late Thursday night—just hours before the announcement—her odds suddenly soared to nearly 70 percent on several international betting platforms. When she was named the winner Friday morning, it raised immediate questions: had someone inside information?

Harpviken believes the explanation is more likely cyber espionage than an internal leak.

“We can hope it was just a coincidence,” he told NTB, “but the odds of that are very slim. We think someone accessed our information.”

He noted that such data could have been used for financial profit or even political reasons.

“It’s no secret that the Nobel Institute is a target for systematic espionage,” Harpviken told NRK.

Harpviken, who took over as Nobel Institute director earlier this year, is no stranger to the Peace Prize process. As the former head of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), he spent years analyzing and predicting potential laureates.

He declined to reveal which cybersecurity firms are involved in the investigation but stressed that the Nobel Institute continuously works to strengthen its digital defenses.

“We always strive for the highest level of security,” he said. “Our systems and routines are regularly updated, but we can’t rule out that someone found a way in.” Photo by Bjørn Erik Pedersen, Wikimedia commons.