Incident 757: OpenAI's ChatGPT Mac App Stored User Data in Unencrypted Text Files

Description: OpenAI's ChatGPT macOS app stored user conversations in plain text. If accessed by a malicious actor, these conversations could have been easily read. The critical security flaw was demonstrated by a third party and ultimately resolved after OpenAI released an update to encrypt the stored data.

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Alleged: OpenAI developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed ChatGPT macOS users.

Incident Stats

Incident ID

757

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Incident Date

2024-07-01

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OpenAI’s ChatGPT Mac app was storing conversations in plain text

theverge.com

theverge.com · 2024

Until Friday, OpenAI’s recently launched ChatGPT macOS app had a potentially worrying security issue: it wasn’t hard to find your chats stored on your computer and read them in plain text. That meant that if a bad actor or malicious app had…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.