Security firm Claroc Research says 35,578 of the 37,571 Grok Build apps it checked could be opened without signing in. Some of the apps exposed internal business and personal information, including a confidential SpaceXSI onboarding plan, a sales map covering 594 accounts, hospital staff records, an intensive-care briefing for one patient and a timesheet containing employee passwords in plain text, according to its GhostShares 2 report.
Claroc said it tried 43,551 Grok app addresses, of which 37,571 were still online and 35,578 opened without sign-in. Ars Technica reported that passive DNS searches returned 43,601 links ending in grok.me. Most of the open apps were games, landing pages and calculators, but Claroc estimated that roughly one in ten contained sensitive personal or business information and that about 2% held material serious enough to rate high or critical. The researchers identified internal data from 30 organizations outside SpaceXSI and X, including six Fortune 500 companies, but did not name those organizations. The findings echo an earlier exposure involving AI-built Lovable apps that exposed passport data and chat messages.
Twenty-four of the exposed apps were built by employees of SpaceXSI, the company formerly known as xAI, and the social network X. The material included internal sales tools, a confidential onboarding plan, a map of 594 strategic accounts and advertising proposals, including one addressed to a U.S. federal agency. Claroc said SpaceXSI removed its 24 staff apps after being notified, while other users’ apps remained accessible when the report was published.
Claroc traced the exposure to how Grok Build publishes apps. Each app receives its own grok.me hostname, and passive DNS records can make those names discoverable even when links are not shared directly. In the paid test account used by Claroc, the publishing panel had “Anyone with the link” selected. Claroc said SpaceXSI told a reporter that employee accounts default to “Only you” and that apps stay private until creators choose to share them. Ars Technica also reported that a Cursor representative described the apps as private by default, but Claroc’s test showed the public-sharing option already selected.
Claroc also tested two apps it created with fabricated data. In one, visitors could add records without signing in; in the other, an uninvited Google account could read, edit and delete customer records. The researchers said they did not perform those actions on other users’ apps. The report documents public access to the apps, but does not establish that outside attackers stole or misused the exposed information.
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