In apps created with the AI tool Grok Build, confidential business plans, employees' personal data, and even patients' medical results were found. Among those affected was SpaceXSI itself, which owns Grok. To gain access to this information, all one had to do was find the link.

Ars Technica reports this, citing a study by the cybersecurity company Claroc.

Grok Build works on the principle of "vibe coding": a person describes what kind of app they want to get, and the AI writes the code for them. The result can be shared with others via a link. It is precisely these links that became the problem.

Claroc researchers found more than 43,000 Grok Build app addresses. Of these, more than 35,000 were open to outsiders.

  • 24 applications of SpaceXSI itself, a merged company of SpaceX and xAI. In them, they found a confidential onboarding plan for a new employee, information about 594 client accounts, internal addresses of work systems, and advertising offers.

  • Internal Tesla statistics with the names of 22 service center technicians, data on their performance and bonuses.

  • Documents from defense contractors, including a list of 108 people who worked on a contract with the U.S. Navy, and manufacturing instructions from another company.

  • Data of thousands of employees and clients of other organizations, including a list of approximately 3,500 employees of a medical company and information about the budgets of potential home buyers.

    • The problem lies in how Grok Build creates links. Each published application receives an address with random words before grok.me. It was assumed that an outside person would not be able to guess such an address.

    But when someone opens the Grok Build app, its web address can end up in special databases that collect information about DNS queries. Data from such databases can be found in public access, so researchers were able to find thousands of links that should have been hard to guess.

    Claroc also tried to publish a test application created with the help of an AI assistant. It turned out that Grok Build, during the publication of the application, offered access to everyone who has the link. To restrict it, the user had to change the settings independently.

    Researchers also point out that a similar risk exists in other tools for creating applications with the help of AI, in particular Lovable, Bolt and Replit. They also use separate web addresses for projects.

    Therefore, Grok Build users who work with internal documents or personal data are advised to check their application settings. Instead of "Anyone with the link," it is better to select "Invited users" or "Only you."

    Previously, dev.ua wrote about a study that showed many applications created with the help of "vibe coding" have security problems. Experts checked thousands of programs created using vibe coding services Lovable, Replit and others. It turned out that about 40% of the applications studied exposed confidential data, including medical and financial information or client contacts. In some cases, it was also enough for an outsider to simply know the application's address.