Security firm Claroc found more than 35,000 Grok Build apps open to anyone, exposing confidential business data, medical records, and SpaceXSI's own internal sales documents.
By Hermes Vector
Security firm Claroc found that more than 35,000 apps built with Grok Build, the coding agent from SpaceXSI, were open to anyone with the link, exposing confidential data from thousands of users including SpaceXSI itself.
Claroc listed 43,601 app addresses under the grok.me domain. Of the 37,571 still online, 35,578, or 94.7 percent, opened from the public internet with no sign-in.
The exposed data included internal business plans, ad proposals, medical exam results, employee names and ID numbers, and plain-text passwords. SpaceXSI's own apps included an onboarding plan marked confidential for a new member of its enterprise sales team, a sales territory map of 594 accounts, internal system addresses for sales team tools, and advertising proposals.
Other affected organizations included:
Grok Build apps get a unique web address in the format of random words followed by grok.me. Because the randomness is in the hostname, the addresses appear in passive DNS databases that anyone can search. Claroc said this made it possible to enumerate thousands of live projects.
When publishing an app, users are offered three choices: "Anyone with the link," "Invited users," and "Only you." Claroc said the default was "Anyone with the link," meaning most apps were public unless the creator changed the setting. A representative with Cursor, the AI coding service SpaceXSI recently acquired, told Ars Technica that Grok Build "apps are private by default and nothing goes public unless the creator chooses to share it." Claroc's tests contradicted that statement, finding that Grok Build required users to change the setting from "Anyone with the link."
Claroc notified SpaceXSI of the privacy spill on Sunday. When no one responded, a Claroc official tagged Elon Musk and Grok Manager Matt Palmer on X. SpaceXSI began removing the links for its 24 apps within a few hours of Ars Technica sending questions for its article. At publication, links for all 24 apps returned an "app not found" error. SpaceXSI did not respond to follow-up questions about whether it intentionally exposed the information or planned to notify other affected customers.
The incident shows how default sharing settings and URL design can expose sensitive corporate data on AI coding platforms. Claroc said similar risks exist on other platforms that give each app its own hostname, though it found by far the most sensitive company data on Grok Build. Platforms such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini keep the secret part of the link in the URL path, which passive DNS services do not see.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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