Grok Build Apps Exposed: How to Lock Your Sharing

Security firm Claroc says 35,578 Grok Build apps could be opened by anyone with the link. It estimates that 650 to 800 of them held private business or personal data, including internal SpaceXSI and X sales material.

If you have ever clicked Publish in Grok Build, this matters to you. Below I explain what Claroc found, what SpaceXSI says, and exactly how to check and lock down your own apps.

TLDR

What: Claroc found 35,578 published Grok Build apps on grok.me that opened without any sign-in.
Private data: about 650 to 800 apps held private material. Claroc confirmed 150 by hand.
Cause: in Claroc’s paid account, the publish panel had “Anyone with the link” already selected.
Takedown: SpaceXSI took down the 24 apps built by its own and X staff. Other users’ apps stayed up.
Your fix: switch any app with real data to “Only you” or “Invited users”, then test it in a signed-out window.

What Happened With Grok Build Apps

Grok Build is the vibe-coding mode inside Grok. You describe an app, game or dashboard, and Grok builds a working version in the chat. Since August 19, 2026, it has been available on every Grok plan, on the web and on mobile.

When you publish an app, it gets its own address in the form name.grok.me. Grok suggests a name made of four random words. That sounds hard to guess, but each name is also a public DNS record.

Claroc Research, in a post by Asaf Aprozper dated November 10, 2026, used a passive DNS service to list those names. Then it simply tried to open each app. Here is the short timeline:

October 31: Claroc started scanning grok.me apps.
November 8: it pulled the full app list and reported the issue to SpaceXSI, with counts, two test apps and four proposed fixes.
November 9: it reported 22 more SpaceXSI and X apps and its 150 confirmed exposures.
November 10: SpaceXSI took down the 24 staff apps, and Claroc published its report.

Note: SpaceXSI is the merged SpaceX and xAI company. Claroc calls it “the company formerly called xAI”, so you will see both names in coverage.

What kind of data was exposed

Most open apps were harmless: games, calculators and simple websites. The problem was the minority that held real data. Claroc listed these examples:

Sales data: pipelines, territory maps and advertising proposals.
Health data: patient labs, imaging and ventilator status from an ICU briefing app.
Staff data: rosters, badge numbers and shift hours.
Recruiting data: driver lists with personal email addresses.
Passwords: a timesheet app with 18 accounts and plain-text passwords inside a script that browsers download.

The SpaceXSI and X apps

The detail that grabbed headlines was that 24 open apps were built by SpaceXSI and X staff. They included a confidential onboarding plan for a new enterprise sales hire and a sales territory map covering 594 accounts.

There were also eight X advertising proposals and decks. One proposal was addressed to a U.S. federal agency and was marked confidential. Claroc says one more staff app was password-protected, and it did not open that one.

Beyond SpaceXSI, Claroc found internal data from 30 organizations. Of those, 26 had more than 1,000 employees and six were Fortune 500 companies.

The Numbers in One Table

The figures get confusing fast, so here they are side by side. All of them come from Claroc’s own report.

Measure	Number	What it means
Names listed under grok.me	43,601	Found through passive DNS
Distinct apps loaded	43,551	Apps Claroc could reach
Open to anyone with the link	35,578	94.7% of apps that answered
Returned HTTP 401	1,993	Set to “Only you” or “Invited users”
Flagged as private by an AI model	3,477	2,291 business and 1,186 personal
Rated high or critical	1,359	968 kept after a stricter second read
Claroc’s best estimate	650 to 800	Apps with truly private data
Confirmed by hand	150	Claroc says the real number is higher
SpaceXSI and X staff apps	24	Taken down on November 10

Notice the gap between 3,477 and 650 to 800. The first number came from an automated model. The smaller estimate came after stricter checks, so it is the fairer figure to quote.

Why So Many Apps Were Open

There was no hack in the usual sense. Nobody broke a password. The apps were published with link sharing, and the links could be found.

The preselected sharing option

Claroc says that in the paid account it used, the publish panel offered three options. “Anyone with the link” was already selected when the panel opened.

Anyone with the link: no sign-in needed. Anyone who has or finds the address can open the app.
Invited users: only people you invite can open it.
Only you: nobody else can open it. Outsiders get an error page.

Claroc also noted that free-plan users can build apps, but publishing needed a paid plan in its account. So the open apps came from people who paid and then clicked through a panel with link sharing preselected.

Why “random” links were not secret

Each app lives on its own hostname. Hostnames show up in DNS data, and passive DNS services record them. That turns a “secret link” into a list anyone can download.

Claroc says about 95% of the open apps in its first set had no sign-in code at all. So once the address was known, the data was one click away.

Warning: “Anyone with the link” is not the same as private. Treat it like posting the app publicly, because the address can leak through DNS, browser history, chats or screenshots.

What SpaceXSI Says

SpaceXSI did not reply to Claroc’s report directly, according to Claroc. It did answer a reporter’s questions on November 10. Its main line was: “Grok apps are private until their creator chooses to share one.”

SpaceXSI described the publish flow like this:

Click Publish.
Pick an address and click Publish again.
Choose between “Only you” and “Anyone with the link”.
Accept a legal disclaimer.
Click Publish a final time.

SpaceXSI also said employee accounts default to “Only you”. Claroc’s reply is simple. Nothing goes live before Publish, but the access step offered link sharing preselected, so the extra clicks did not protect anyone who skimmed past it.

Both points can be true at once. Publishing takes deliberate steps, yet a preselected option still nudges people toward the open setting.

How to Check and Lock Your Grok Build Apps

Quick answer: open each published app, set access to “Only you” or “Invited users”, then load its grok.me address in a private window while signed out. You should see an error page, not your app.

Grok Build is still marked Beta, so button labels can move. The access options below are the ones Claroc and SpaceXSI both describe.

List every app you have published. Open Grok, go through your Build chats, and note each name.grok.me address. Include old test apps and remixes.
Sort them by risk. Mark any app that stores names, emails, health details, passwords, customer lists or company plans. Public games and portfolio pages can stay open.
Open the publish settings for each risky app. In the app’s Build chat, click Publish (or the share and publish control) to reach the access options.
Pick the narrowest access. Choose “Only you” for personal tools. Choose “Invited users” for a small team. Avoid “Anyone with the link” for anything with real data.
Save and republish. Go through the remaining Publish steps so the new access level takes effect.
Test while signed out. Open a private or incognito window and visit the grok.me address. Claroc saw HTTP 401 errors for apps set to “Only you” or “Invited users”, so an error is the result you want.
Unpublish what you do not need. If you cannot restrict an app, or nobody uses it, unpublish or delete it and keep a private copy of the code.
Rotate exposed secrets. If an open app ever contained passwords or API keys in its code, change them now. Move future keys into Grok Build’s Secrets feature instead of the app code.

Tip: view the page source of your app in that signed-out window. Search it for “@”, “password” and “key”. Claroc found plain-text passwords in a script that every visitor’s browser downloaded.

Check search engines too

Some grok.me sites were indexed by Google before this report. Search site:grok.me plus your app name to see if yours appears.

Locking the app is the real fix. A noindex tag only asks search engines to hide a page, and anyone with the link can still open it. Once the app returns an error, stale search results will fade over time.

Claroc found a second issue in its own test app. It built an app for a four-person team with “Continue with Google” sign-in. In its test, any Google account could read, edit and delete records.

The reason was in the generated code. It added the signed-in user to the team before it checked membership, so the check always passed. Claroc only tested its own app and did not touch anyone else’s.

If you asked Grok to add team-only sign-in, test it like this:

Use an outside account: sign in with a Google account that is not on your team.
Try every action: attempt to view, add, edit and delete a record.
Fix and retest: if anything works, ask Grok to check membership before granting access, then repeat the test.

A login screen is not proof of security. It only shows that a form exists. Tesla North summed up Claroc’s point well: a working interface does not tell you who can see the data underneath.

What Companies Should Do

The SpaceXSI apps show that even staff at the company that builds the tool can slip. If your team uses AI app builders, Claroc suggests a short audit:

Find the tools. Ask which AI app builders your staff use, Grok Build included.
Search passive DNS. Look up those builders’ domains and check which apps open without an account.
Confirm access levels. Apps with internal data should use “Invited users” or “Only you”, and outsiders should see an error page.
Test sign-in from outside. Use an account that is not part of your company.
Clean up. Search app scripts for names, emails and passwords, and unpublish apps nobody owns.

Claroc also sent SpaceXSI four fixes. They are worth knowing, because they show what a safer default looks like:

Hidden paths: serve shared apps on hard-to-guess paths under one host, not one hostname per app.
Org-only option: add “everyone in my organization”, limited to the company email domain.
Private by default: make “Only you” the default and show who can open an app before it goes live.
Database warning: warn at publish when an app has a database but no sign-in.

This is the second Grok Build privacy story in a few months. In July, researchers found that the Grok Build terminal tool uploaded whole Git repositories, history included, to xAI storage. If you use both, review your AI tool security basics as well.

My Take

This is less about a clever attack and more about defaults. When a tool hands one-click publishing to millions of non-developers, the preselected option becomes the real security policy.

SpaceXSI is right that publishing takes several clicks. But Claroc’s numbers show what people actually do: 94.7% of the apps that answered were open. Most were harmless games, but 650 to 800 held data that should never have been public.

For you, the fix takes ten minutes. Check every published app, lock the ones with real data, and test from a signed-out window.

If you are comparing Grok with other assistants, my ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Grok guide covers the wider picture, and Grok pricing breaks down the paid plans. New to the tool? Start with is Grok free.

Troubleshooting: Common Problems and Fixes

The app still opens after I changed access: you may not have finished the Publish steps. Go through them again, then reload in a fresh private window so no cached session is used.
I cannot find the access options: Grok Build is in Beta and labels move. Open the app’s Build chat and look for the Publish or share control, or ask Grok in the chat to change the app’s access.
Invited users cannot get in: check that you invited the exact account they sign in with. Personal and work Google accounts are different.
My app still shows in Google: that is a stale result. Once the app returns an error, use Google’s Refresh Outdated Content tool to update the listing.
Outsiders can sign in to my team app: the membership check is probably wrong, as in Claroc’s test. Ask Grok to verify membership before granting access, then retest with an outside account.
I am not sure if my data was seen: Claroc did not publish a list of affected apps. Assume an open app with data was readable, and rotate any passwords or keys it held.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Grok Build hacked?

No. Claroc did not break into anything. The apps were published with link sharing, and their addresses could be found through public DNS data.

How many Grok Build apps were exposed?

Claroc found 35,578 apps that opened for anyone with the link. It estimates 650 to 800 held private data and confirmed 150 by hand.

Did SpaceXSI take the apps down?

SpaceXSI took down the 24 apps built by its own and X staff on November 10. Claroc says apps from other users and organizations were not taken down.

Is “Anyone with the link” safe for private data?

No. Grok Build gives each app its own hostname, and hostnames appear in DNS records. Use “Only you” or “Invited users” for anything sensitive.

How do I know my app is locked?

Open its grok.me address in a private window while signed out. If you see an error page instead of your app, outsiders are blocked.

Are free Grok users affected?

Claroc says free users can build apps, but publishing needed a paid plan in its account. If you never published an app, it was not on a public grok.me address.

Is this the same as the Grok Build Git upload issue?

No. The July issue involved the Grok Build terminal tool uploading Git repositories. This November report is about published web apps on grok.me.

35,578 Grok Build Apps Exposed: What Happened and How to Lock Your Sharing