Security firm Claroc discovered mass exposure of data in applications created with the Grok tool
Claroc found that 94.7% of the 37 571 checked applications created with the Grok tool were publicly accessible without logging in. The exposed data included patient records, passwords in plain text, and internal documents of SpaceXSI and X.
Security firm Claroc checked 37 571 applications created using the "Build" mode in the Grok tool (a product of SpaceXSI, formerly xAI) and found that 35 578 of them, i.e. 94.7%, were accessible to anyone who knew the address, without logging in. According to Claroc, the cause is the default "Anyone with the link" setting when publishing, subdomains that are easily discoverable in commercial passive DNS databases, and flaws in the access controls of the generated code.
Among the exposed applications were 24 created by SpaceXSI and X employees, including a confidential onboarding plan for a new salesperson, a map of strategic sales accounts with 594 entries, and eight advertising proposals for X, one of which targeted a US federal agency and was marked as confidential. According to Claroc, approximately 650 to 800 applications contained private data; confirmed cases included an ICU record with a patient's lab values, a list of more than 3 500 employees of a hospital group, a fire department shift schedule, and an attendance application with 18 accounts with passwords in plain text. Claroc identified a total of 30 affected organizations besides SpaceXSI and X, including six from the Fortune 500 list, but did not disclose their names.
Claroc's own test applications revealed another problem: for one application with a contact list, the database was completely missing a login check, while for another, Grok itself added login via Google and X, but first added every logged-in account to the team and only checked permissions afterward, which allowed a foreign account to read, modify, and delete the data. The Grok tool offers the "Only you" option, but it is not the default – unlike ChatGPT, which, according to Claroc's test, sets "Only me" as standard after an application is shared.
SpaceXSI responded to the findings by stating that applications are private until the creator shares them, that publishing requires multiple steps including a legal notice, and that employee accounts have "Only you" as the default setting. Claroc counters that this does not help if "Anyone with the link" is still preselected in the final step, and points out that even the 24 exposed employee applications show how little the stricter default setting for employees actually protects. SpaceXSI removed only those 24 employee applications from public access; other exposed applications from other users and organizations remain online, so Claroc is contacting those affected directly. According to available sources, this is already the third privacy incident involving the Grok tool, following the leak of more than 370 000 shared conversations into Google Search in August 2025 and the uploading of user files without consent in the Grok Build tool in July 2026. Claroc has observed a similar sharing problem with Meta's Muse agent (about 6 800 exposed conversations) and with shared chats and applications in Anthropic's Claude product, which appeared in search engines in July.
Why it matters
The findings show that default sharing settings in AI application-building tools can expose sensitive data publicly without any further action by the user, even at the very company that operates the tool. The problem is not limited to Grok – Claroc has observed similar behavior in competing tools as well, so this represents a systemic risk for the entire category of "vibe coding" applications, not an isolated flaw in a single product.
Two audiences, two different impacts
What this means
For individuals
Anyone who has created and shared their own application using the Grok tool should check the visibility settings and, if necessary, manually switch them to "Only you", because the default value is public access.
For a business
Companies that allow employees to create internal applications via Grok Build risk the unintentional leakage of sensitive documents, passwords, and third-party data due to unsafe default sharing settings and flaws in the access controls of the generated code; an audit of published applications and a company policy for their sharing is needed.
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Event sources
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