SavvyNik: "Grok-Built Apps Exposed… Even SpaceXSI. Whoops.". Facts on this page cite the primary sources below, not the video.

The claim: Grok Build leaked everyone's data.

The proof: It's narrower than that, and still serious. Security firm Claroc published research on Tuesday, Nov. 10 saying it tried 43,551 addresses of apps people published with Grok Build on grok.me. 37,571 were still online, and 35,578 (94.7%) opened for anyone, with no sign-in. Most were games, calculators and landing pages. But Claroc says about 1 in 10 held business or personal data, and 24 were built by SpaceX SI and X staff, including a confidential onboarding plan for a new sales hire and a territory map of 594 accounts. SpaceX SI took those 24 down after Claroc and Ars Technica asked about them. SpaceX SI says apps are private until their creator chooses to share one.

Editorial Thesis

Nobody broke in. People clicked Publish, and their apps ended up open to anyone who could find the address. Claroc's point is that the address wasn't as secret as it looked, and that the default share setting it saw was "Anyone with the link." If you or your team publish apps from Grok, the fix is in your hands today: check who can open each one.

Honest Verdict

  • Reported by Claroc, corroborated by Ars Technica and The Deep Dive: 35,578 of 37,571 online Grok apps opened with no sign-in; 1,993 (5.3%) asked for sign-in; 24 SpaceX SI and X staff apps were open and were taken down after reporters asked.
  • Claroc's own test: in its paid account, the publish panel offered Anyone with the link, Invited users and Only you, with Anyone with the link already selected.
  • SpaceX SI's side: apps are private until the creator shares; publishing takes several steps and a legal disclaimer; employee accounts default to Only you. A Cursor representative told Ars that Grok Build "apps are private by default and nothing goes public unless the creator chooses to share it."
  • Not established: that any data was misused, how many people opened these apps, or any regulator action. This is one firm's research.

How an "unguessable" link got found

Each Grok app gets its own web address, like four random words in front of grok.me. Nobody would guess one. But when anyone opens a new address, their computer looks it up in DNS, the internet's phone book, and commercial "passive DNS" services record those lookups. Claroc says it pulled the addresses from that kind of data, then opened each app's first page once, signed in to nothing.

Ars Technica's Dan Goodin explained the design issue: the random part sits to the left of the domain, where DNS sees it. Shared links that put the secret after the slash, like Claude's published artifacts or ChatGPT's shared chats, don't show up in DNS that way. Ars also notes other app builders, including Lovable, Bolt and Replit, give each app its own hostname, so the same risk applies there.

What was in the open apps

Claroc says it names no organizations, but describes what it confirmed by hand:

Owner typeWhat Claroc says was open
SpaceX SI and X staff (24 apps)Confidential sales onboarding plan; 594-account territory map; eight X ad proposals, one to a U.S. federal agency marked confidential
A hospital groupStaff app with a roster of more than 3,500 employees
A contractorTimesheet code holding staff passwords in plain text
OthersICU patient briefing; fire department shift board; trucking driver list

Claroc estimates roughly 650 to 800 apps held private data, and says 30 other identifiable organizations were affected, six of them in the Fortune 500.

Timeline (as Claroc and Ars tell it)

  • Sun Nov. 8: Claroc reports the issue and two SpaceX SI apps to SpaceX SI's security address.
  • Mon Nov. 9: Claroc reports the other 22 staff apps. Ars says all 24 were still open Monday evening.
  • Tue Nov. 10: SpaceX SI answers a reporter and removes the 24 staff apps within hours of Ars's questions. Claroc publishes and starts notifying affected organizations itself.

What to do if you publish apps with Grok

  1. Open each published app in a private browser window. If it loads without asking you to sign in, anyone can see it.
  2. For anything internal, switch access to Invited users or Only you.
  3. If an app has a sign-in, test it from an account outside your team. Claroc says a team app Grok built for it let any Google account in.
  4. Unpublish apps nobody owns anymore. Claroc says unpublishing takes the address offline right away.
  5. Never put passwords or keys in an app's code.

What this does not prove

  • It does not prove SpaceX SI was hacked. These apps were published by their builders.
  • It does not prove anyone misused the data.
  • It does not settle the default-setting dispute. Claroc says its account pre-selected "Anyone with the link"; SpaceX SI says apps start private and employee accounts default to Only you.

Bottom Line

Claroc says 35,578 published Grok Build apps opened for anyone, and 24 of them came from SpaceX SI and X staff. SpaceX SI pulled its own after reporters asked; most others were still up when the research went out. If you've published anything from Grok, check its access setting today.

Source notes

Claroc's full research post (Nov. 10) read Nov. 11 at about 5 AM ET. Ars Technica (Nov. 10) for SpaceX SI's removals, the Cursor representative's statement and the DNS explanation. The Deep Dive (Nov. 10) for the same counts. We did not open any of the apps. Video: SavvyNik's Nov. 11 English recap (11:58, VJ6rcz1zoMY) covers this Claroc/Grok Build exposure story and cites Claroc's post.

Sources