Reported Breaking
Researchers say 35,578 Grok Build apps opened without sign-in, including 24 built by SpaceXSI staff
Security firm Claroc reported on Nov 10, 2026 that of 37,571 live Grok Build apps it tried, "35,578 of those (94.7%) opened for anyone, with no sign-in," including 24 built by SpaceXSI and X staff. SpaceXSI took its staff apps down after the report; a Cursor representative told Ars Technica that apps are private by default.
- Facts listed
- 6
- listed below, each from a source we read
- We tested
- Not tested yet
- reported from sources; we did not run it ourselves
- Gaps we flag
- 4
- things we could not verify
- Sources
- 2
- 1 primary, linked below
What happened
| # | What the source says | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Confirmed by the researchers' own post: Claroc tried 43,551 Grok app addresses under grok.me; 37,571 were online, and 35,578 (94.7%) opened for anyone with no sign-in. Only 1,993 returned HTTP 401, the response for apps set to Only you or Invited users. | Reported |
| 02 | Reported by Claroc: 24 open apps were built by SpaceXSI and X staff, including a confidential onboarding plan, a sales territory map of 594 accounts and eight X advertising proposals, one addressed to a US federal agency. | Reported |
| 03 | Reported by Claroc: besides SpaceXSI and X, open apps held internal data from 30 identifiable organizations, 26 with more than 1,000 employees and six in the Fortune 500, plus staff rosters and a patient's ICU briefing. | Reported |
| 04 | The mechanism, per Claroc and Ars Technica: each published app gets its own hostname under grok.me, so the random words land in DNS lookups that passive DNS services index, unlike links that keep the secret in the URL path. | Reported |
| 05 | Disputed default: Claroc says clicking Publish proposed Anyone with the link as the access setting; a Cursor representative told Ars Technica that Grok Build apps are private by default and nothing goes public unless the creator shares it. | Reported |
| 06 | Response so far: SpaceXSI took down the 24 staff apps after the report, per Claroc, and links for all 24 returned "app not found" when Ars Technica published. Claroc says other users' open apps were not taken down and it is notifying affected organizations itself. | Reported |
reported by the sourcemeasured or run by usnot verified
Primary source: Claroc: GhostShares 2, Grok apps exposed business secrets and private data. On-the-record statements and letters are the source of record; press reports are named and attributed where we use them.
What is confirmed and what is alleged
Confirmed on the record: Claroc published its method and counts, and Ars Technica reports that links for SpaceXSI's 24 staff apps returned "app not found" by the time its story ran. A Cursor representative's statement to Ars Technica is on the record.
Reported, not independently checked by us: the specific contents of the open apps, the count of affected organizations, and Claroc's estimate that about 1 in 10 open apps held sensitive material. Claroc withheld hostnames, so no outside party can reproduce the sample from the post alone.
Open questions
- What was the default access setting when Grok Build users clicked Publish, and has it changed since Nov 10?
- Will SpaceXSI notify the owners of the roughly 35,000 open apps, as Claroc says it has not committed to?
- Did anyone other than Claroc access the exposed apps before the report?
Our reading for builders
Our reading: putting the secret part of a share link in the hostname makes it discoverable through DNS, whatever its entropy. Per-app hostnames are also a browser security boundary, so the fix is likely a non-secret hostname plus a secret in the path, or sign-in by default, not simply moving words around. That is our analysis, not a statement from SpaceXSI or Claroc.
In the source’s words
“35,578 of those (94.7%) opened for anyone, with no sign-in.”
“SpaceXSI holds the full list of app addresses and can reach every app’s owner, but its response did not say it would.”
What we have not verified
- We did not access any Grok Build app or repeat Claroc's scan; all counts are from Claroc's post.
- We could not confirm Grok Build's default publish setting; Claroc and a Cursor representative describe it differently.
- We did not verify the identities of the affected organizations named or described by Claroc and Ars Technica.
- SpaceXSI had not published its own statement on the findings when we checked.
This brief is Reported: written from the sources below, not from running the release ourselves.
Sources
- Claroc: GhostShares 2, Grok apps exposed business secrets and private dataprimary source · fetched 2026-11-11
- Ars Technica: Grok Build coding agent leaks confidential infosource · fetched 2026-11-11
Related
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