Data breach at hearing aid giant Amplifon impacts thousands






Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Saturday that his personal data had been disseminated on the dark web.
The post Italyβs Meloni Blames Pro-Russian Hackers for Leak of Foreign Ministerβs Data on the Dark Web appeared first on SecurityWeek.
Three men concocted an elaborate, yearslong scheme that defrauded companies of at least $129 million by using AI to impersonate executives and lawyers, tricking targeted victims into transferring large payments to criminal-controlled accounts, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Jacob Soall, Sharon Hazan and Guy Sheetrit allegedly used AI to impersonate the voices and images of chief executive officers at companies and lawyers at major international law firms. The trio are accused of targeting thousands of victims between July 2024 and February 2026, according to court records.
Victims include a U.K.-based financial tech company that lost almost $11.6 million, a Florida-based pet food company that lost $5.2 million, a Missouri-based hospital system that lost $4.8 million, a Massachusetts-based mutual fund company that lost $4.6 million, a California-based hospital system that lost nearly $3 million, a New York-based investment company duped out of $2.8 million, and a Rhode Island-based bank that transferred nearly $2.7 million.
The trioβs scheme typically started by targeting accounting staff, pretending to be the CEO, and requesting help on a financial transaction, officials said. Using AI to create deepfakes pretending to be CEOs, the crew allegedly directed employees to contact attorneys who they would also impersonate to trick the employee into thinking the financial transaction was legitimate.
Prosecutors said the men and their co-conspirators identified and targeted employees who had sufficient authority to authorize large wire transfers.Β
The scheme typically began with an email from an e-signature company, wherein the impersonated CEO claimed they were working on a βconfidential financial transactionβ that required the victim employee to sign a non-disclosure agreement before contacting the purported attorney at a victim law firm, according to an unsealed indictment.
Soall, Hazan, Sheetrit and their co-conspirators allegedly impersonated attorneys at some of the 50 largest law firms globally.Β
βSuper intelligence technology offers tremendous potential, but the public should recognize that there are some who seek to use this emerging technology to pursue criminal goals,β Jamie McDonald, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.Β
Prosecutors said the wire transfers were sent to bank accounts controlled by co-conspirators around the world, including the United States, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Austria, Slovakia and China. The crew allegedly converted the funds to cryptocurrency and distributed the illicit proceeds amongst themselves and their co-conspirators.
Soall, a 41-year-old from Marbella, Spain, was arrested in Spain on June 17. He allegedly primarily impersonated attorneys from the United Kingdom, reading from a handwritten script designed to dupe targeted victims.
Hazan, a 54-year-old from Israel, was arrested in Spain on Aug. 5. He allegedly boasted that he had been laundering money since 1994, including more than $400 million in the past three years, and was previously convicted in the Southern District of New York of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in 2008.
Sheetrit, a 42-year-old from Israel and the United Arab Emirates, was arrested in the United Kingdom on Sept. 7 and allegedly laundered funds from the scheme.
The trio are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, two counts of aggravated identity theft, money laundering conspiracy and two counts of money laundering. The seven counts carry a maximum sentence of 104 years in prison.
βThe alleged scheme orchestrated by Soall, Hazan, and Sheetrit demonstrates how the use of advanced technology can be exploited to commit large scale fraud,β James C. Barnacle Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI New York field office, said in a statement.
βAs criminals continue to weaponize emerging technologies, the FBI remains committed to rapidly adapting our capabilities to identify, investigate, and disrupt those who seek to harm New Yorkers and businesses operating in our communities.β
After initial publication of this story, Sheetritβs attorneys, Sharon Nahari and Shay Shorer, emailed a statement to CyberScoop saying their client βhas no connection to this matter and has had no involvement in it whatsoever.β
βMr. Sheetrit is a businessman with extensive expertise and professional experience in cybersecurity and technology,β wrote Nahari and Shorer. βIn the course of his work, he provides professional advisory services to a range of clients. Working in cybersecurity, possessing specialist expertise or providing advisory services cannot, in themselves, establish complicity in or involvement in the alleged conduct.β
βOur client maintains his complete innocence and, like everyone else, is entitled to the presumption of innocence,β the statement continued. βWe are confident that, once the facts have been established and the evidence fully examined, it will become clear that there is no basis for holding him criminally responsible.β
UPDATE: Nov. 6, 2026; 8:25 p.m.: This story has been updated to include a statement from attorneys representing Guy Sheetrit.
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Two Canadian men broke into the networks of multiple U.S. universities, stole credentials and implanted malware on compromised computers to commandeer processing power for a cryptocurrency mining operation, the Justice Department said.
Ryan James Roach and Mathiew James Stubbings allegedly compromised the networks of at least four universities in New York, Tennessee, North Carolina and Massachusetts between mid 2016 and late 2019, according to an unsealed indictment.Β
Roach, a 35-year-old from Saskatchewan, Canada, was extradited to the United States on Oct. 28 and arraigned Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. Prosecutors said they are still seeking the extradition of Stubbings, a 41-year-old from Ontario, Canada.
A grand jury previously indicted the Canadian nationals in April 2022. The men are charged with multiple cybercrimes and face up to 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine, if convicted.
Prosecutors accuse the men of researching and identifying potential victims with supercomputers containing vulnerabilities they could exploit. The men breached networks and deployed malware on compromised machines to take over systems, officials said.Β
Roach and Stubbings allegedly rented virtual private servers based in Europe and the United States under false identities to conceal traffic, deploy rootkits, steal credentials and data, and transmit cryptocurrency mining software to compromised computers.
βThe defendants caused at least one supercomputer to mine cryptocurrency on their behalf, which caused much of the supercomputerβs processing speed and power to become unavailable to its legitimate owner,β prosecutors wrote in the indictment.
Officials didnβt say how much cryptocurrency the pair allegedly mined for financial gain as part of the conspiracy.
If convicted, Roach and Stubbings are also ordered to forfeit an assortment of networking and data storage devices, and any property or proceeds obtained through the alleged crime spree.
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A federal grand jury indicted two Canadian men for hijacking university supercomputers to secretly mine Electroneum cryptocurrency.
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