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By Svea Herbst-Bayliss NEW YORK (Reuters) -Corporate advisory firm Longacre Square Partners has formed a strategic partnership with artificial intelligence startup InvestorSight to give its clients access to AI tools to assess investor behavior in takeovers and board fights. The program designed by InvestorSight, a firm co-founded by Dartmouth professor Mark DesJardine and data scientists, is the first interactive tool to model how mutual funds and other institutional investors are likely to react to various corporate situations. It can be used to gather advanced data, including how investors have voted in previous contests, to assess vulnerability for a company or activist investor mounting a campaign. Investment banks and other institutions already offer corporate vulnerability assessments, but InvestorSight is an interactive tool that lets the user model different outcomes. Its introduction comes at a time activist investors are taking aim at big and small companies alike, often pushing them to refresh boards or consider putting themselves up for sale. Longacre, founded in 2021 by Greg Marose and Dan Zacchei, counts GameStop and Bausch & Lomb as clients. It advised hedge fund Politan in its successful proxy fight at Masimo, and activist investor Ancora on its campaign to elect directors and push for management changes at Norfolk Southern. DesJardine will join Longacre's advisory board.  (Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Jan Harvey)

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(Reuters) -Apple shares surged to an all-time high on Monday, with the iPhone maker close to becoming the third company to hit a $4 trillion market valuation as data showed strong momentum for the latest iPhone. Data from research firm Counterpoint showed the iPhone 17 series outperformed its predecessor in early sales in China and the United States, with the newer models out-selling the iPhone 16 series by 14% during their first 10 days of availability in the two countries. Apple shares jumped 4.2% to $262.9, giving it a market capitalization of about $3.9 trillion and making it the second most valuable company in the world after AI-chip giant Nvidia. Over the weekend, Evercore ISI added the stock to its Tactical Outperform List as the brokerage expects Apple to beat market expectations for the current three-month period and issue upbeat forecasts for the December quarter. "The recent launch of online orders in China may be a positive tailwind for the Dec-qtr, as initial delivery time data reflects stronger initial demand relative to other regions at launch," Evercore ISI analysts wrote in a note. Apple unveiled in September an upgraded line of new iPhones, including a slimmer iPhone Air, and held prices steady amid U.S. tariff concerns. "They rolled out the latest version of their iPhone and it's doing much better than anticipated … the demand trends for the company's iPhones are now on the front foot," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth. Apple shares had struggled earlier this year on concerns over tough competition in China and uncertainties around how the company would navigate high U.S. tariffs on Asian economies such as China and India, its major manufacturing hubs.  However, the stock has risen modestly since early August after the company pledged $100 billion in additional U.S. investment, a move that could help it sidestep potential tariffs. The stock is set for its biggest one-day jump in four weeks if gains hold and will be up more than 5% for the year. Apple will report quarterly earnings after the bell on October 30. (Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan and Twesha Dikshit in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Arun Koyyur)

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By Deborah Mary Sophia and Shubham Kalia (Reuters) -Amazon's cloud services unit AWS was struggling to recover on Monday from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world's most popular apps – Snapchat and Reddit – and disrupted businesses globally. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, and highlights the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies. After about eight hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 12:00 p.m. ET (1400 GMT). But AWS acknowledged that elevated errors were still affecting several AWS services. AWS was down for more than 7,800 users as of 11:46 a.m. ET, according to outage tracking website Downdetector. That figure is higher than the earlier peak of about 5,800 reports at 3:48 a.m. ET. "We have narrowed down the source of the network connectivity issues that impacted AWS Services. The root cause is an underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers," AWS said in the latest update on its status page. The issue, AWS said, originated from within the "EC2 internal network." EC2 refers to Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud" service, which provides on-demand cloud capacity within AWS. Businesses use EC2 to run virtual servers that they need to develop, launch and host applications, and can scale up or down on capacity as required. While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat, PayPal's Venmo and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day. ISSUE ORIGINATED FROM AWS SITE KNOWN FOR PREVIOUS OUTAGES AWS provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals and is the world's largest cloud provider, followed by Microsoft's Azure and Alphabet's Google Cloud. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms – ranging from food delivery apps to gaming platforms and airline systems – that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS said on its status page that Monday's outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location in northern Virginia, its oldest and largest for web services. The site suffered outages in 2021 and 2020. According to documentation on the AWS website, the US-EAST-1 site is often the default region for many AWS services. Asked for comment, AWS directed Reuters to its status page. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. HOURS LATER, A ROCKY RECOVERY Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over 4 million users reported issues due to the incident. Snapchat, for instance, last had over 7,500 reports on Downdetector, lower than the peak of more than 22,000 but still higher than the 4,000 outage instances seen at around 7:00 a.m. ET. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood all experienced platform disruptions and attributed them to AWS.  Amazon's own services, including its shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa, were also hit, although Downdetector last showed a decrease in severity. Fortnite, owned by Epic Games, along with Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms affected. Uber rival Lyft was also knocked down in the United States. In a post on X, Signal President Meredith Whittaker confirmed the messaging app was hit by the outage as well, though billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, said his platform continued to work.  OUTAGE EXPOSES RISK OF DEPENDENCE ON HANDFUL OF PROVIDERS In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were also facing issues, according to Downdetector's UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC's website. The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and how reliant they now are on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch causing havoc with business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said. "The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service," said Nishanth Sastry, director of research at the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science. While there has been no indication of a potential cyberattack behind Monday's outage, the scale of the disruption has fed speculation. "When anything like this happens, the concern that it's a cyber incident is understandable," said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos. "AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset." (Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair, Ananya Palyekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by James Pearson and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Joe Bavier and Richard Chang)

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(Reuters) -Apple shares surged to an all-time high on Monday, with the iPhone maker close to becoming the third company to hit a $4 trillion market valuation as data showed strong momentum for the latest iPhone. Data from research firm Counterpoint showed the iPhone 17 series outperformed its predecessor in early sales in China and the United States, with the newer models out-selling the iPhone 16 series by 14% during their first 10 days of availability in the two countries. Apple shares jumped 4.5% to $263.7, giving it a market capitalization of about $3.91 trillion and making it the second most valuable company in the world behind AI-chip giant Nvidia. Over the weekend, Evercore ISI added the stock to its Tactical Outperform List as the brokerage expects Apple to beat market expectations for the current three-month period and issue upbeat forecasts for the December quarter. "The recent launch of online orders in China may be a positive tailwind for the Dec-qtr, as initial delivery time data reflects stronger initial demand relative to other regions at launch," Evercore ISI analysts wrote in a note. Apple shares struggled earlier this year on concerns over tough competition in China and uncertainties around how the company would navigate high U.S. tariffs on Asian economies such as China and India, its major manufacturing hubs.  The stock is set for its biggest one-day jump since early August if gains hold and will be up 5% year-to-date. Apple will report quarterly earnings after the bell on October 30. (Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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By Jeff Horwitz NEW YORK (Reuters) -Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters. The posts shown to those users featured “prominent display” of chest, buttocks, or thighs, “explicit judgement” about body types and “content related to disordered eating and/or negative body image.”  While such material is not banned on Instagram, the researchers noted that parents, teens and outside experts have told Meta they believe it is potentially harmful to young users.  Meta surveyed 1,149 teens over the course of the 2023-2024 academic year about whether and how often they felt bad about their bodies after using Instagram. Then they manually sampled the content those users saw on the platform over a three-month period. The study showed that for the 223 teens who often felt bad about their bodies after viewing Instagram, “eating disorder adjacent content” made up 10.5% of what they saw on the platform. Among the other teens in the study, such content accounted for only 3.3% of what they saw.  “Teens who reported frequent body dissatisfaction after viewing posts on Instagram… saw about three times more body-focused/ED-adjacent content than other teens,” the authors wrote, referring to eating disorders, according to a summary of the research reviewed exclusively by Reuters. In addition to seeing more eating disorder-adjacent content, researchers found, the teens who reported the most negative feelings about themselves saw more provocative content more broadly, content Meta classifies as “mature themes,”  “Risky behavior,” “Harm & Cruelty” and “Suffering.” Cumulatively, such content accounted for 27% of what those teens saw on the platform, compared with 13.6% among their peers who hadn’t reported negative feelings.  META RESEARCHERS EXPRESSED CONCERN The researchers stressed that their findings did not prove that Instagram was making users feel worse about their bodies. “It is not possible to establish the causal direction of these findings,” they wrote, noting the possibility that teens who felt bad about themselves could be actively seeking out that material.  The Instagram research, a redacted replica of which is published here and has not been previously reported, demonstrated that Instagram exposed teens who “report frequently experiencing body dissatisfaction" to high doses of content that Meta’s own advisors “have expressed support for limiting,” the writeup said. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the document reviewed by Reuters demonstrates Meta’s commitment to understanding and improving its products.  “This research is further proof we remain committed to understanding young people’s experiences and using those insights to build safer, more supportive platforms for teens,” Stone said, noting the company’s recent announcement that it would attempt to show minors content in-line with PG-13 movie standards.   In the study, Meta said that its existing screening tools – which were designed to catch violations of platform rules – were incapable of detecting 98.5% of the “sensitive” content that the company believes might not have been appropriate for teens. The finding was “not necessarily surprising,” the researchers wrote, because Meta had only recently begun work on building an algorithm to detect the potentially harmful content they were examining. 'ASSOCIATION' BETWEEN CONTENT AND 'FEELING WORSE ABOUT ONE'S BODY' The study, which is marked, “Do not distribute internally or externally without permission,” is the latest internal research that demonstrates an “association” between viewing fashion, beauty and fitness content and “reporting feeling worse about one’s body,” the document states. The research was conducted as part of Meta’s efforts to understand interactions between users and its own products, which rely on algorithms to determine which content to show to users.  In the United States, the company has faced state and federal investigations of Instagram’s effects on children as well as civil suits by school districts alleging harmful product design and deceptive marketing of its platforms as safe for teens.  Those suits have prominently cited past leaked internal research from Meta in which researchers expressed their belief that the platform’s content recommendations might be harmful to youth with existing body image issues.  Since July of this year, Stone said, the company has reduced the amount of age-restricted content shown to teenage Instagram users by half.  CONTENT WARRANTED TRIGGER WARNING Jenny Radesky, a University of Michigan Associate Professor of Pediatrics who reviewed Meta’s unreleased research at Reuters’ request, called the study’s methodology robust and its findings disturbing. “This supports the idea that teens with psychological vulnerabilities are being profiled by Instagram and fed more harmful content,” Radesky said. “We know that a lot of what people consume on social media comes from the feed, not from search.” Past internal research at Meta “has demonstrated an association between frequency of reporting feeling worse about one’s body” and consuming Instagram fitness and beauty content, the writeup says.  Meta’s researchers wrote that teens, parents, pediatricians, external advisors and Meta’s own Eating Disorder & Body Image Advisory Council have urged Instagram to limit how much of that content it shows to teenagers, warning that it “may be detrimental to teen well-being, specifically by precipitating or exacerbating feelings of body dissatisfaction.” Such content falls afoul of Meta’s rules against content that overtly promotes eating disorders. The report included samples of problematic content including images of skinny women in lingerie and bikinis, fight videos and a drawing of a crying figure scrawled with phrases including “how could I ever compare” and “make it all end.” One of the example posts showed a closeup of a woman’s lacerated neck.  Though the content did not violate Meta’s rules, the researchers found it disturbing enough that they issued a “sensitive content” warning to colleagues reading their work. (Reporting by Jeff Horwitz in Oakland, Calif. Editing by Kenneth Li and Michael Learmonth)

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Millions of people around the world stutter. Despite widespread therapy options and extensive research, we still can't nail down exactly where this condition begins. Berlin (dpa) – Around 1% of people make calls, socialize and join meetings with it. Stuttering is common, and yet the precise genetic cause remains elusive. Here are the key questions and answers for World Stuttering Awareness Day on October 22: What is stuttering? Stuttering is a speech fluency disorder. People who stutter know exactly what they want to say but cannot express it fluently in the moment. In many countries, stuttering is recognised as a disability, and affected children can apply for accommodations in school. There are three main types of stuttering, characterised by the following core symptoms: Repetition of sounds and syllables Prolongation of individual sounds Blocks before or during a word According to speech therapist Claudia Walther, the main challenge for people who stutter is often transitioning into vowels, particularly after consonants. Accompanying symptoms may include physical effort to overcome speech interruptions or avoiding certain words altogether. What causes stuttering? Experts believe stuttering is primarily genetic. "People have tried to identify the specific genes responsible, but this has not been successful," says neurologist Martin Sommer from Germany's University Medical Center Göttingen. A recent study published in Nature Genetics identified 57 genetic loci linked to stuttering, associated with 48 genes. However, study leader Jennifer Below from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee noted that: "No one really understands why someone stutters; it has been a complete mystery." The study analysed data from nearly 100,000 individuals who reported having stuttered, compared to over a million people who did not. Sommer, however, criticized the study's methodology, arguing that the question "Have you ever stuttered or stammered?" was too vague. Sommer notes that stuttering is linked to differences in the left hemisphere of the brain. "There is an area with reduced fiber integrity," he explains. "The brain fibers connecting various grey matter regions do not function as effectively as in fluent speakers." When should help be sought? Stuttering typically develops between the ages of two and six. "Therapy is definitely recommended if the child shows signs of struggle," says speech therapist Walther. For example, if a child realises they are having difficulty speaking and begins shaking their head, raising their voice or forcing out sounds. Parents should consult a paediatrician if the child feels ashamed, withdraws socially or becomes reluctant to speak. How can stuttering be treated? Speech therapy can help individuals manage their stuttering. One approach, known as stuttering modification, focuses on altering the stuttering itself by pausing during moments of stuttering and deliberately forming transitions into vowels. Another method, fluency shaping, aims to modify overall speech patterns. "This involves techniques to change the way one speaks," Walther explains, such as elongating speech to improve fluency.Successful stuttering therapy also addresses any anxiety or fear associated with speaking, which may have developed over time, Walther adds. The following information is not intended for publication dpa jak yysw a3

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By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA's top official on Monday said the U.S. space agency was opening up the contract for its Artemis 3 astronaut moon landing to compete against billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX, the mission's current contractor, which was running behind schedule. "I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," NASA administrator Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program.  Blue Origin is a SpaceX rival founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, former president and CEO of Amazon.com. "We're going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually get us back to the moon first." Since 2021, SpaceX has had a NASA contract, now worth $4.4 billion, to land humans on the moon by 2027 using its Starship rocket. The increasingly delayed target date is mostly aimed at beating China's 2030 moon landing goal. The mission would be the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. Blue Origin, with its Blue Moon lander, has a similar lunar landing contract awarded by NASA in 2023 but for later Artemis missions. The company had fought for years for that contract, pushing NASA and lawmakers to select a second lander for redundancy. Duffy's remarks on Monday suggest Blue Origin could soon compete to snatch the Artemis 3 mission from SpaceX, whose delayed Starship has raised concerns among agency officials in recent months. NASA did not immediately return requests for comment and specifics on Duffy's remarks. NASA's multibillion-dollar Artemis program is a series of missions involving multiple contractors aimed at returning humans to the moon for a long-term presence there. Artemis 3 has been planned for 2027 with SpaceX's Starship. But Duffy said Musk's SpaceX was not on schedule and could put the U.S. behind its rival, with President Donald Trump wanting to see the mission take place before his White House term ends in January 2029. "They're behind schedule, and so the president wants to make sure we beat the Chinese," Duffy told Fox.  Artemis 2, a 10-day flight around the moon and back involving systems built by Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, is on track for April and could get moved up to February, he added. Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp reportedly spoke with Trump over the summer when the Republican president was feuding with Musk, who backed Trump in the 2024 election and went on to lead the broad effort to cut the federal government known as DOGE. Representatives for SpaceX and Blue Origin could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Susan Heavey; additional reporting by Deborah Sophia and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)

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By Jeff Horwitz NEW YORK (Reuters) -Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters. The posts shown to those users featured “prominent display” of chest, buttocks, or thighs, “explicit judgement” about body types and “content related to disordered eating and/or negative body image.”  While such material is not banned on Instagram, the researchers noted that parents, teens and outside experts have told Meta they believe it is potentially harmful to young users.  Meta surveyed 1,149 teens over the course of the 2023-2024 academic year about whether and how often they felt bad about their bodies after using Instagram. Then they manually sampled the content those users saw on the platform over a three-month period. The study showed that for the 223 teens who often felt bad about their bodies after viewing Instagram, “eating disorder adjacent content” made up 10.5% of what they saw on the platform. Among the other teens in the study, such content accounted for only 3.3% of what they saw.  “Teens who reported frequent body dissatisfaction after viewing posts on Instagram… saw about three times more body-focused/ED-adjacent content than other teens,” the authors wrote, referring to eating disorders, according to a summary of the research reviewed exclusively by Reuters. In addition to seeing more eating disorder-adjacent content, researchers found, the teens who reported the most negative feelings about themselves saw more provocative content more broadly, content Meta classifies as “mature themes,”  “Risky behavior,” “Harm & Cruelty” and “Suffering.” Cumulatively, such content accounted for 27% of what those teens saw on the platform, compared with 13.6% among their peers who hadn’t reported negative feelings.  META RESEARCHERS EXPRESSED CONCERN The researchers stressed that their findings did not prove that Instagram was making users feel worse about their bodies. “It is not possible to establish the causal direction of these findings,” they wrote, noting the possibility that teens who felt bad about themselves could be actively seeking out that material.  The Instagram research, a redacted replica of which is published here and has not been previously reported, demonstrated that Instagram exposed teens who “report frequently experiencing body dissatisfaction" to high doses of content that Meta’s own advisors “have expressed support for limiting,” the writeup said. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the document reviewed by Reuters demonstrates Meta’s commitment to understanding and improving its products.  “This research is further proof we remain committed to understanding young people’s experiences and using those insights to build safer, more supportive platforms for teens,” Stone said, noting the company’s recent announcement that it would attempt to show minors content in-line with PG-13 movie standards.   In the study, Meta said that its existing screening tools – which were designed to catch violations of platform rules – were incapable of detecting 98.5% of the “sensitive” content that the company believes might not have been appropriate for teens. The finding was “not necessarily surprising,” the researchers wrote, because Meta had only recently begun work on building an algorithm to detect the potentially harmful content they were examining. 'ASSOCIATION' BETWEEN CONTENT AND 'FEELING WORSE ABOUT ONE'S BODY' The study, which is marked, “Do not distribute internally or externally without permission,” is the latest internal research that demonstrates an “association” between viewing fashion, beauty and fitness content and “reporting feeling worse about one’s body,” the document states. The research was conducted as part of Meta’s efforts to understand interactions between users and its own products, which rely on algorithms to determine which content to show to users.  In the United States, the company has faced state and federal investigations of Instagram’s effects on children as well as civil suits by school districts alleging harmful product design and deceptive marketing of its platforms as safe for teens.  Those suits have prominently cited past leaked internal research from Meta in which researchers expressed their belief that the platform’s content recommendations might be harmful to youth with existing body image issues.  Since July of this year, Stone said, the company has reduced the amount of age-restricted content shown to teenage Instagram users by half.  CONTENT WARRANTED TRIGGER WARNING Jenny Radesky, a University of Michigan Associate Professor of Pediatrics who reviewed Meta’s unreleased research at Reuters’ request, called the study’s methodology robust and its findings disturbing. “This supports the idea that teens with psychological vulnerabilities are being profiled by Instagram and fed more harmful content,” Radesky said. “We know that a lot of what people consume on social media comes from the feed, not from search.” Past internal research at Meta “has demonstrated an association between frequency of reporting feeling worse about one’s body” and consuming Instagram fitness and beauty content, the writeup says.  Meta’s researchers wrote that teens, parents, pediatricians, external advisors and Meta’s own Eating Disorder & Body Image Advisory Council have urged Instagram to limit how much of that content it shows to teenagers, warning that it “may be detrimental to teen well-being, specifically by precipitating or exacerbating feelings of body dissatisfaction.” Such content falls afoul of Meta’s rules against content that overtly promotes eating disorders. The report included samples of problematic content including images of skinny women in lingerie and bikinis, fight videos and a drawing of a crying figure scrawled with phrases including “how could I ever compare” and “make it all end.” One of the example posts showed a closeup of a woman’s lacerated neck.  Though the content did not violate Meta’s rules, the researchers found it disturbing enough that they issued a “sensitive content” warning to colleagues reading their work. (Reporting by Jeff Horwitz in Oakland, Calif. Editing by Kenneth Li and Michael Learmonth)

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By Raphael Satter and AJ Vicens WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A more than year-long digital intrusion into cybersecurity company F5, publicized last week and blamed on Chinese spies, has defenders across the industry hunting for signs of compromise among the many corporate networks that use its products. Several worry that more disclosures are coming. So far, little is known about the scope of the hack beyond statements from F5 that its source code and sensitive information about software vulnerabilities were stolen. The company's website says it serves more than four in five Fortune 500 companies in some capacity, and U.S. officials have said that federal networks were among those targeted in the hack's aftermath and have urged immediate action. That extensive presence alone has triggered widespread unease. F5's stock tumbled 12 percent last Thursday, the day it published a host of fixes for previously vulnerable products, although it rebounded slightly by the end of the week. Several cybersecurity executives and analysts compared the hack at F5 to the extraordinary intrusion at the software company SolarWinds discovered in December 2020. That company, whose Orion software was used for network monitoring, became the unwitting springboard into a number of highly sensitive networks after its source code was tampered with. Around a dozen government departments were eventually breached in the wide-ranging spy operation. Just like SolarWinds, which was little known in the consumer market before the hack, F5 has a host of tech equipment and services – load balancers, content delivery networks and firewalls – that typically play low-profile but critical roles in directing, managing and filtering organizations' internet traffic. "I'm not equating this to the SolarWinds attack, but I'm equating it to the fact that people never hear of it, but it's in everybody's network," said Michael Sikorski, the chief technology officer at Palo Alto Networks' threat intelligence-focused Unit 42. "When we're talking about 80 percent of the Fortune 500, we're talking about banks, law firms, tech companies, you name it." Sikorski said the F5 hackers stole source code and undisclosed vulnerability information, potentially giving them the ability to develop tools for cyberespionage in a tight time frame. Bob Huber, chief security officer of cybersecurity firm Tenable, said he too had SolarWinds in mind as he tried to make sense of what was going on at F5. "As of right now, this is not SolarWinds," he told Reuters, noting that F5 has said it had "no evidence of modification to our software supply chain." Still, Huber said there were signs that more unwelcome disclosures lie ahead, given the paucity of information about the breach and the urgency with which the government was moving to remediate it, via an October 15 emergency directive and a public warning that unnamed federal networks were being targeted by a "nation-state cyber threat actor." "We're waiting for the other shoe to drop," he said. While no other victims of the F5 breach have been publicly identified, cybersecurity firm Greynoise Intelligence, which monitors internet scanning and attack activity, has found hints that an unknown actor was searching out F5 devices on the internet starting about a month ago. Greynoise detected a major spike in scanning activity focused on F5 beginning in mid-September, according to Glenn Thorpe, the company's senior director of security research and detection engineering. "That implies someone somewhere knew something," Thorpe said. (Reporting by Raphael Satter and AJ Vicens; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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By Raphael Satter and AJ Vicens WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A more than year-long digital intrusion into cybersecurity company F5, publicized last week and blamed on Chinese spies, has defenders across the industry hunting for signs of compromise among the many corporate networks that use its products. Several worry that more disclosures are coming. So far, little is known about the scope of the hack beyond statements from F5 that its source code and sensitive information about software vulnerabilities were stolen. The company's website says it serves more than four in five Fortune 500 companies in some capacity, and U.S. officials have said that federal networks were among those targeted in the hack's aftermath and have urged immediate action. That extensive presence alone has triggered widespread unease. F5's stock tumbled 12 percent last Thursday, the day it published a host of fixes for previously vulnerable products, although it rebounded slightly by the end of the week. Several cybersecurity executives and analysts compared the hack at F5 to the extraordinary intrusion at the software company SolarWinds discovered in December 2020. That company, whose Orion software was used for network monitoring, became the unwitting springboard into a number of highly sensitive networks after its source code was tampered with. Around a dozen government departments were eventually breached in the wide-ranging spy operation. Just like SolarWinds, which was little known in the consumer market before the hack, F5 has a host of tech equipment and services – load balancers, content delivery networks and firewalls – that typically play low-profile but critical roles in directing, managing and filtering organizations' internet traffic. "I'm not equating this to the SolarWinds attack, but I'm equating it to the fact that people never hear of it, but it's in everybody's network," said Michael Sikorski, the chief technology officer at Palo Alto Networks' threat intelligence-focused Unit 42. "When we're talking about 80 percent of the Fortune 500, we're talking about banks, law firms, tech companies, you name it." Sikorski said the F5 hackers stole source code and undisclosed vulnerability information, potentially giving them the ability to develop tools for cyberespionage in a tight time frame. Bob Huber, chief security officer of cybersecurity firm Tenable, said he too had SolarWinds in mind as he tried to make sense of what was going on at F5. "As of right now, this is not SolarWinds," he told Reuters, noting that F5 has said it had "no evidence of modification to our software supply chain." Still, Huber said there were signs that more unwelcome disclosures lie ahead, given the paucity of information about the breach and the urgency with which the government was moving to remediate it, via an October 15 emergency directive and a public warning that unnamed federal networks were being targeted by a "nation-state cyber threat actor." "We're waiting for the other shoe to drop," he said. While no other victims of the F5 breach have been publicly identified, cybersecurity firm Greynoise Intelligence, which monitors internet scanning and attack activity, has found hints that an unknown actor was searching out F5 devices on the internet starting about a month ago. Greynoise detected a major spike in scanning activity focused on F5 beginning in mid-September, according to Glenn Thorpe, the company's senior director of security research and detection engineering. "That implies someone somewhere knew something," Thorpe said. (Reporting by Raphael Satter and AJ Vicens; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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