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NewsMaterial2 min readDisconfirmAI Editorial

Security Firm Claroc Finds 95% of Grok-Built Apps Publicly Accessible by Default, Exposing Patient Data and Internal Sales Pipelines

Security firm Claroc reported that over 35,000 web apps built with SpaceXSI's AI assistant Grok were publicly accessible without login due to insecure default publishing settings. The exposed data included confidential internal documents from SpaceXSI and X, patient lab values, and plaintext passwords. SpaceXSI took only its own 24 employee apps offline, leaving the rest accessible.

2026-11-11 20:53 GMT+8

Security firm Claroc revealed in a recent report that 94.7% of web applications built using SpaceXSI's (formerly xAI) AI assistant Grok were publicly accessible without any login credentials. This finding highlights significant flaws in the default security settings of AI-assisted development platforms.

According to Claroc's examination of 37,571 online apps, 35,578 were in an "Anyone with the link" state. The root cause lies in the publish dialog within Grok's "Build" mode: on the paid account used for testing, the "Anyone with the link" option was preselected. Furthermore, each app receives its own subdomain, which gets indexed in commercial passive DNS databases after the first visit, allowing attackers to easily discover these apps through pattern searches.

The leaked data included not only personal information from ordinary users but also internal confidential documents from SpaceXSI and X. Claroc discovered 24 accessible apps created by SpaceXSI and X employees, including onboarding plans for new enterprise sales team members, a sales territory map containing 594 strategic accounts and pipeline data, and ad proposals targeting U.S. federal agencies. Some documents were explicitly marked as "confidential."

Sensitive personal health data was also exposed. Confirmed cases included patient lab values in ICU briefings, a list of over 3,500 employees at a hospital group, and fire department shift schedules. In the source code of a Grok-generated timesheet app, researchers even found 18 accounts with plaintext passwords. Claroc estimates that between 650 and 800 apps contained private data, affecting 30 organizations, six of which are Fortune 500 companies.

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In response to the disclosure, SpaceXSI stated that apps are private until shared by their creator, that publishing takes multiple steps, and that employee accounts default to "Only you." However, Claroc countered that extra clicks do not help if "Anyone with the link" remains preselected at the final step. Currently, SpaceXSI has taken its 24 employee apps offline but has not removed the thousands of open apps belonging to other users and organizations.

This is at least the third privacy incident involving Grok for SpaceXSI. Previously, Forbes found more than 370,000 shared Grok conversations appearing in Google Search results, and the Grok Build terminal tool uploaded user files to servers without asking. As AI-generated code becomes widespread, such large-scale data exposure risks due to improper default configurations are becoming a focal point for the industry.

Sources

  • the-decoder.comThe Decoder↗
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