McHire: 64 Million Applicant Records Behind an AI Hiring Bot and a '123456' Password
Key takeaways
- →Researchers accessed the admin backend of McHire, McDonald's AI hiring assistant built by Paradox.ai, using default credentials.
- →An insecure API then exposed records for up to 64 million applicants.
- →AgentGuard inventories vendor AI systems and their data reach. AgentHunter detects the enumeration pattern used to scrape records.
- 1
Vendor AI chatbot deployed for hiring
- 2
Test admin account with default password
- 3
Researcher logs into admin backend
- 4
Sequential IDs enumerated via API
AgentHunter flags sequential record enumeration; AgentGuard surfaces the vendor AI's unmanaged access
- 5
Millions of applicant records exposed
- Affected
- McDonald's job applicants (via vendor platform)
- When
- June–July 2025
- Impact
- Names, emails, phone numbers and chat histories exposed
What happened
Security researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curry reported that the McHire platform's admin interface accepted the default credentials '123456'. From there, an insecure direct object reference in an API let them view applicant chat records just by changing an ID. Paradox.ai fixed the issues quickly after disclosure.
Why it's an AI governance failure
The chatbot ('Olivia') processed sensitive personal data at huge scale on behalf of a brand that didn't operate it. That AI system and its surrounding infrastructure sat outside the customer's security inventory.
How Andeavour would have stopped it
AgentGuard discovers vendor-operated AI systems handling your data and scores their exposure, including stale test accounts and admin surfaces. AgentHunter detects systematic, sequential enumeration at the edge and stops it long before millions of records are touched.
The lesson
Every incident in this series shares one root cause: an AI system acted with real authority, and nothing in the stack was checking whether that action made sense for its task, its Principal or its environment. That's the gap AgentGuard and AgentHunter was built to close, with zero integration and deployment measured in days.
See AgentGuard + AgentHunter on your own environment
Zero integration. Live in days. We'll show you what your current stack is missing.