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Stock index futures rise ahead of busy earnings week, inflation data. (00:25) Chinese-linked hackers breached F5 networks for months, U.S. and U.K. issue warnings. (01:13) Amazon Web Services outage disrupts Snapchat, Robinhood and more. (02:41)
This is an abridged transcript.
Stock index futures are in the green on this Monday.
Traders are gearing up for a big earnings week and the retail inflation report.
S&P 500 futures (SPX) +0.4%, Nasdaq 100 futures (US100:IND) +0.3% and Dow futures (INDU) +0.2%.
“This week we will get the postponed CPI release for September, which is coming out on Friday, just in time for the FOMC meeting the week after. In terms of what to expect, our U.S. economists are looking for headline CPI to come in at a monthly +0.42% pace, which would push up the year-on-year rate to +3.1% and be the strongest monthly print since January,” Deutsche Bank’s Henry Allen said.
We’ve entered day 20 of the government shutdown.
State-sponsored hackers believed to be linked to China infiltrated systems at cybersecurity firm F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV).
The hackers got in in late 2023 and remained undetected for months until their discovery in August 2025.
According to Bloomberg News, the attackers reportedly exploited a flaw in F5’s (NASDAQ:FFIV) own software that had been left exposed online after company staff failed to follow internal security guidelines.
Once inside, they gained long-term access to the network, downloading files from F5’s (FFIV) BIG-IP application suite, including portions of source code and data on unpatched vulnerabilities.
F5 (FFIV) disclosed the breach in a regulatory filing, describing it as a “persistent” intrusion. The company’s shares fell more than 10% following the announcement.
Security officials said the hackers deployed Brickstorm, a type of malware associated with a Chinese threat group known for stealthy, long-term access to technology and legal service providers. F5 has since brought in CrowdStrike (CRWD), Google’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) Mandiant and law enforcement to assist with the investigation.
Authorities in the U.S. and U.K. issued alerts urging organizations to update F5 (FFIV) products by October 22.
F5 (FFIV) said only a small number of customers were affected and that it has seen no signs of active exploitation or tampering with its source code, Bloomberg News reported.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Services is experiencing a major outage that has disrupted several websites, apps and online games.
“We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region,” the company posted on the AWS health dashboard.
“Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause,” it updated.
User complaints began spiking around 2:30 am EST, according to Downdetector.
Impacted apps include Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Snapchat (SNAP), and McDonald’s (MCD). Games such as Roblox (RBLX) and Fortnite have also been hit.
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Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the green. Crude oil is down 0.3% at $57/barrel. Bitcoin is up 2% at $110,000. Gold is flat at $4,251.
The FTSE 100 is up 0.4% and the DAX is up 1.1%.
The biggest movers for the day premarket: Plug Power (NASDAQ:PLUG) +9% – Shares rose after TD Cowen raised its price target to $4.50 from $3.00 while maintaining a Buy rating.
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