Dutch authorities arrested a 40-year-old man after he downloaded confidential documents that had been mistakenly shared by the police and refused to delete them unless he received “something in return.”

Police detained the suspect at his Prinses Beatrixstraat residence in Ridderkerk on Thursday evening for computer hacking after the failed “extortion” attempt, searching his home and seizing data storage devices to recover the files.

The incident began when the man contacted police on February 12 about images he had that may be relevant to an ongoing investigation. An officer responded to his inquiry but, instead of sending a link to upload the images, mistakenly shared a download link to confidential police documents.

As first reported by DataBreaches.Net, the man downloaded the files despite the obvious error. When the police instructed him to stop downloading and delete the materials, he allegedly refused unless he was given “something in return.”

In a Monday press release, the Dutch police said that knowingly downloading files from a link clearly intended for uploading constitutes potential computer trespass under Dutch law, particularly when instructed not to access the materials.

“If you receive a download link, while you know that you should get an upload link, it is clearly said that it is not downloaded and chooses to download the files anyway, then you may be guilty of computer trespassing,” the police said.

“The recipient can reasonably assume that the download link and the files that are shared with it are not intended for him.”

Authorities reported the data breach and launched an investigation even though they have yet to find evidence that the confidential documents were distributed beyond the suspect’s possession.

The Dutch police also emphasized that recipients of misdirected confidential materials have a legal obligation to report errors and to refrain from accessing or retaining documents not intended for them, regardless of how the materials were received.

“The police have no indication that the files were distributed further. They are following protocol for data breaches. The police are continuing their investigation,” the authorities added.

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• Growing AI fears recently triggered a sharp sell-off across software stocks
• SaaS valuations dropped as disruption narratives gained momentum
• AWS revenue growth outpaced broader tech market performance, and CEO looks to allay fears

Technology stocks have struggled in 2026 as investors reassess the commercial impact of rapidly advancing AI tools.

The pullback has been especially sharp among software-as-a-service companies, where some analysts now describe the downturn as an “SaaS apocalypse.”

Eurail B.V., the operator that provides access to 250,000 kilometers of European railways, confirmed that data stolen in a breach earlier this year is being offered for sale on the dark web.

The company said that a threat actor also published a sample of the data on the Telegram messaging platform but it is still trying to determine the type of records and number of customers affected.

Eurail B.V. is a Netherlands-based firm that manages and sells passes (Eurail and Interrail) for train travel across Europe, offering flexibility for multi-country trips.

Its passes are also very popular among young European travelers participating in the EU’s DiscoverEU program.

Last month, the company disclosed that it suffered a data breach when threat actors gained unauthorized access to its customer database, compromising sensitive information, including full names, passport details, ID numbers, bank account IBANs, health information, and contact details (email addresses, phone numbers).

“We have become aware that the data has been offered for sale on the dark web and a sample data set has been published on Telegram.

“We are currently investigating which specific data records or how many of the affected customers this concerns,” reads Eurail’s update.

Eurail states that it continues the investigation to determine exactly what data was compromised for each affected customer, and will send individual notifications for those impacted.

Meanwhile, concerned data protection authorities have been notified in accordance with the GDPR requirements, and authorities outside the EU will be alerted soon.

Customers who may have had their information exposed in this incident should be vigilant to potential phishing and scam attempts.

Eurail suggests that customers update their Rail Planner app account passwords and reset them on any other platform where they use the same credentials.

Also, customers should monitor their bank account activity closely and report any suspicious transactions to their bank immediately.

A FAQ page has been published to support customers, and any concerns may also be addressed directly via email to privacyhelp@eurail.com.

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Qwen3.5 is 60pc cheaper to use and eight times better at processing large workloads than its predecessor, the company said.

Alibaba has unveiled its latest AI model, Qwen3.5, as newer launches from Chinese companies catch up to their US counterparts in the race for AI dominance.

The first open weight model in the Qwen3.5 series demonstrates “outstanding results across a full range” of benchmarks, the company said. It ranks higher than OpenAI’s GPT-5.2, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 and Google’s Gemini 3 Pro in several of the tests.

The model is built on a hybrid architecture that allows only 17bn parameters to activate per forward pass, while comprising a total of 397bn parameters. This, Alibaba said, optimises speed without sacrificing its capability.

According to the company, Qwen3.5 is 60pc cheaper to use and eight times better at processing large workloads than its immediate predecessor. The new model comes with “visual agentic capabilities”, Alibaba said – the ability to take actions across phone and computer apps.

“Built for the agentic AI era, Qwen3.5 is designed to help developers and enterprises move faster and do more with the same compute, setting a new benchmark for capability per unit of inference cost,” the company said in a statement, as reported by Reuters.

Alibaba’s latest launch follows ByteDance releasing an upgraded version of its Doubao chatbot app over the weekend. The agentic chatbot service has close to 200m users.

The TikTok parent also recently launched the latest version of its AI video generator, Seedance 2.0, which garnered praise for its capability while also receiving criticism for potential copyright theft.

Other Chinese AI leaders launched their own new models recently, including Zhipu, which unveiled GLM-5, trained entirely using Chinese chips; MiniMax, which released M2.5; and the Alibaba-backed Moonshot AI, which came out with Kimi K2.5.

These new launches come ahead of DeepSeek’s new V4 model, expected to come out later this month. According to reports, the new DeepSeek model could outperform rivals ChatGPT and Claude, particularly on tasks that involve long coding prompts.

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• Freight AI claims triggered a sharp market sell-off across trucking logistics shares
• Investors reacted strongly to automation fears as small AI firm surged in value
• Market anxiety around AI disruption spread beyond trucking into healthcare and publishing

Shares in trucking and logistics companies plunged after investors reacted sharply to claims made by a tiny AI firm about automation in freight operations.

Wall Street Journal reported the selloff “is one of the most extreme examples yet of the sell-now, ask-later ethos sweeping financial markets in the artificial-intelligence era.”

The Washington Hotel brand in Japan has announced that that its servers were compromised in a ransomware attack, exposing various business data.

The hospitality group has established an internal task force and engaged external cybersecurity experts to assess the impact of the intrusion, determine whether customer data was compromised, and coordinate recovery efforts.

Washington Hotel, a brand operating under Fujita Kanko Inc. (WHG Hotels), is a business-focused hospitality chain with 30 locations across Japan. WHG has 11,000 rooms over its properties and has nearly 5 million guests every year.

According to the company’s disclosure, hackers breached its network on Friday, February 13, 2026, at 22:00 (local time). The IT staff immediately disconnected servers from the internet to prevent the attack from spreading on the network.

The organization states that it started consulting with the police and external cybersecurity experts.

Although an investigation is ongoing, Washington Hotel can confirm that the attacker gained access to various business data stored on the affected servers.

Customer data is unlikely to be exposed because the company stores this information on servers managed by a separate company, for which no unauthorized access has been confirmed.

The incident is impacting operations at some Washington Hotel brand properties, including the temporary unavailability of credit card terminals. Besides that, the firm says it recorded no significant operational disruption.

The financial impact of the incident is currently under review. Washington Hotel promised to provide updates if any additional relevant details emerge.

As of writing, no ransomware groups have claimed the Washington Hotel on known dark-web-based extortion portals that BleepingComputer monitors.

Multiple companies in Japan have been targeted by hackers lately. Some of the recent incidents include global automaker Nissan, retail giant Muji, the largest brewer in the country, Asahi, and telecom giant NTT.

Although not necessarily related to the breach at Washington Hotel, JPCERT/CC disclosed late last week that hackers were exploiting an arbitrary command injection flaw in Soliton Systems’ FileZen products, tracked under CVE-2026-25108.

The file-sharing appliance is widely used by Japanese companies and was also targeted in 2021.

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