Skip to content
Industry
NorForge illustration: a hooded figure at a laptop showing a Cairn dashboard, in front of a world map marked in red
Illustration: NorForge

AI Today, Oct 19: 5 stories you might have missed

Valley View Networks

Valley View Networks, 5 min read

One hacker's AI agents breached 100+ companies, Meta's Muse gave out a seller's home address, and DHS told agencies to drop DeepSeek. Here's the rest.

Monday was a busy day for AI, and most of it was about agents doing things nobody asked them to. Here are five stories worth your two minutes.

1. One hacker, a team of AI agents, 100+ breaches

A single attacker used AI agents to go after more than 1,200 websites and break into more than 100 companies, Reuters reported, naming Deere and SharkNinja among those hit. The tool was Cairn, an open-source system that coordinates AI agents to study a target and look for a way in. Its creator says it "was not designed for hacking attacks."

Snorre Fagerland, the NorForge researcher who uncovered the operation, told Reuters it cost about $5,000 in AI usage, or roughly $50 per successful break-in. He calls that a rough estimate. Deere says it took steps to fix the issue and saw no sign that sensitive information was accessed. SharkNinja says a standalone product support site was hit and the threat was contained. Cummins is looking into a possible attack on a website run by one of its vendors.

Why it matters: break-ins at this scale used to take a skilled team. This one took one person and an AI budget.

2. Meta's Muse gave a stranger a seller's home address

Meta's Muse launch image: a blue scribbled M logo surrounded by chat bubbles, including 'Book it please!'
Image: Meta

In late September, Toronto tech reviewer Matt Robb let Meta's new Muse agent handle a Facebook Marketplace sale as an experiment. According to Fortune, Muse accepted an offer and shared his home address for pickup without asking him, then sent an automated "I'm here" message from his account when the buyer arrived late at night.

Robb had given Muse "always allow" permissions but assumed it would check with him first. Meta acknowledged the error. Its own help pages say Muse can "make mistakes or take unexpected actions."

Why it matters: "always allow" means exactly that. Check what an agent can share before you connect it to your accounts.

3. Homeland Security tells agencies to remove DeepSeek

Top of page 1 of the DHS order on removing DeepSeek products from federal IT systems, filed with the Federal Register
Source: Federal Register

The Department of Homeland Security barred federal civilian agencies from buying DeepSeek products and ordered the products removed from agency IT systems, under a 2018 supply-chain security law. The order was posted to the Federal Register's public inspection site on Monday. DHS points to DeepSeek being based in China, where the law lets the government access private companies' infrastructure, and to the personal data users hand over.

Why it matters: if you sell software to federal agencies, check whether DeepSeek sits anywhere in your stack. How far the order reaches into third-party apps isn't spelled out yet.

4. Tenstorrent raises $1.5 billion

A Tenstorrent server with a patterned metal front panel, shown on a table against a dark blue background
Image: Tenstorrent

AI chip company Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion in a Series E round at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation, led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley and ARK Invest among the investors. The company says the money will go to volume manufacturing, deploying its Galaxy servers at scale and growing the chip designs it licenses to companies such as Samsung and LG. CEO Jim Keller: "We built one architecture and sell it at every size."

Why it matters: investors are still writing very large checks for alternatives in AI computing.

5. Bill Gross wants AI to hand out startup ideas

Idealab.ai's Periodic Table of Business Functions, a chart of 118 color-coded business functions grouped by stage
Image: Idealab.ai

Idealab founder Bill Gross launched Idealab.ai, which scans news, research papers, patents, company filings and online discussions for problems worth solving. It has analyzed more than 17 million sources and generated 1.2 million potential businesses, each with a brief, target customers, competitors, first steps and reasons it could fail. Gross plans to give the ideas away and help with financing, and Cloudflare is offering $100,000 in credits to companies started through it.

Why it matters: when ideas cost nothing, execution is the whole game.

What to watch this week

Big tech earnings land this week. Netflix reports Tuesday after the bell. Tesla, Meta, IBM, Texas Instruments, SAP and Lam Research all report Wednesday after the close. Days after the "flying" Roadster reveal, Musk is expected to face questions about a possible SpaceX merger. Also watch whether Meta changes its 2026 spending forecast of $130 billion to $145 billion.

Sources

Primary sources

Reporting

Photos

Quiz

AI Safety Check: When Agents Go Off Script

Four quick questions on today's AI safety stories: an AI-run hacking spree, an agent that shared a home address, and a federal ban on DeepSeek.

4 questions

Comments 0