AI coding platform Lovable is facing a security crisis after a researcher claimed that users who signed up for free accounts could access other users’ code and credentials across projects.

The researcher, known as @weezerOSINT, claimed the issue allowed access to source code, database credentials, AI chat histories, and customer data from projects created by other users.

“Lovable has a mass data breach affecting every project created before November 2025,” the researcher wrote on X. “I made a Lovable account today and was able to access another user’s source code, database credentials, AI chat histories, and customer data are all readable by any free account.”

Multiple experts on the subject now say that the issue could have stemmed from a Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) vulnerability, a type of API flaw that allows users to access resources belonging to other accounts when ownership validation checks are missing.

According to the researcher, the flaw required no sophisticated exploit. They said they were able to retrieve another user’s profile, projects, and credentials after making just a handful of API calls from a free account.

The researcher also claimed they initially reported the vulnerability 48 days earlier through Lovable’s bug disclosure programme on HackerOne, but the report was closed as a duplicate submission.

In early responses posted on X, Lovable rejected claims that the incident represented a data breach. “We were made aware of concerns regarding the visibility of chat messages and code on Lovable projects with public visibility settings,” the company said. “To be clear: We did not suffer a data breach.”

The company at the time attributed the situation to confusion around how public projects function on the platform. “Our documentation of what ‘public’ implies was unclear, and that’s a failure on us.”

Lovable said the visibility of code in public projects was intentional. “When it comes to code of public projects: That is intentional behavior. We have experimented with different UX for how the build history is surfaced on public projects, but the core behavior has been consistent and by design,” the company said.

Later, the company provided a more detailed explanation of how its project visibility settings have evolved over time. “A public project meant the entire project was public, both chat and code,” Lovable said. “Over time, we realized this was confusing. Many users thought ‘public’ just meant others could see their published app, not the chat of an unpublished project. That’s reasonable.”

Lovable added that it had previously updated its systems so chats in public projects could not be accessed, but that change was unintentionally reversed earlier this year.

“We also retroactively patched our API so public project chats couldn’t be accessed, no matter what,” the company wrote. “Unfortunately, in February, while unifying permissions in our backend, we accidentally re-enabled access to chats on public projects.”

The company said the vulnerability has since been fixed. “Upon learning this, we immediately reverted the change to make all public projects’ chats private again.”

Lovable also said the earlier bug report was not escalated because reviewers believed the behaviour matched the platform’s design. “Unfortunately, the reports were closed without escalation because our HackerOne partners thought that seeing public projects’ chats was the intended behaviour.”

In a statement to The Register, a Lovable spokesperson said the company only became aware of the issue again this week and addressed it immediately.

“This was originally reported through our vulnerability disclosure program (via HackerOne),” the spokesperson said. “Unfortunately, the reports were closed without escalation to our internal team because our HackerOne partners thought that seeing public projects’ chats was the intended behavior, as was the case historically.”

The spokesperson added that users always had the option to change project visibility. Any user could have changed their project from public to private at any time, they said, adding that “chats from public projects are no longer visible – for anyone.”

Lovable’s AI coding tools are used by several large companies, including Uber, Zendesk, and Deutsche Telekom, according to the company’s latest funding announcement.

Lovable triples its valuation in five months as AI coding demand surges
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TechloyEjiro Onose