I've been part of a response team on a security incident and I really feel for them. However, this initial communication is terrible.
Something happened, we won't say what, but it was severe enough to notify law enforcement. What floors me is the only actionable advice is to "review environment variables". What should a customer even do with that advice? Make sure the variable are still there? How would you know if any of them were exposed or leaked?
The advice should be to IMMEDIATELY rotate all passwords, access tokens, and any sensitive information shared with Vercel. And then begin to audit access logs, customer data, etc, for unusual activity.
The only reason to dramatically overpay for the hosting resources they provide is because you expect them to expertly manage security and stability.
I know there is a huge fog of uncertainly in the early stages of an incident, but it spooks me how intentionally vague they seem to be here about what happened and who has been impacted.
show comments
nettlin
They just added more details:
> Indicators of compromise (IOCs)
> Our investigation has revealed that the incident originated from a third-party AI tool whose Google Workspace OAuth app was the subject of a broader compromise, potentially affecting hundreds of its users across many organizations.
> We are publishing the following IOC to support the wider community in the investigation and vetting of potential malicious activity in their environments. We recommend that Google Workspace Administrators and Google Account owners check for usage of this app immediately.
> Vercel has reportedly been breached by ShinyHunters.
show comments
nike-17
Incidents like this are a good reminder of how concentrated our single points of failure have become in the modern web ecosystem. I appreciate the transparency in their disclosure so far, but it definitely makes you re-evaluate the risk profile of leaning entirely on fully managed PaaS solutions.
swingboy
Is this one of those situations where _a lot_ of customers are affected and the “subset” are just the bigger ones they can’t afford to lose?
show comments
OsrsNeedsf2P
The lack of details makes me wonder how large this "subset" of users really is
show comments
jtokoph
This announcement in its current form is quite useless and not actionable. As least people won’t be able to say “why didn’t you say something sooner?” They said _something_
rrmdp
Use VPS, nowadays with the help of AI it's a lot easier to set everything up, you don't need Versel at all. And of course way cheaper
arabsson
So, the Vercel post says a number of customers were impacted, but not everyone, and they will contact the people that were impacted.
I wasn't contacted so does that mean I'm safe?
jngiam1
I don't get why everything is not marked as sensitive in env vars by default instead.
adithyasrin
We run on Vercel and I wonder if / how long before we're alerted about a leak. Quick look online suggests environment variables marked as sensitive are ok, but to which extent I wonder.
oxag3n
> incident response provider
So they use third-party for incident management? They are de-risking by spending more, which is a loose-loose for the customers.
james-clef
The point I am taking away here is to never use Vercel's environment variables to store secrets.
He also suggests in another post that Linear and GitHub could also be pwned?
Either way, hugops to all the SRE/DevOps out there, seems like it's going to be a busy Sunday for many.
show comments
_puk
Hmmm, the dashboard 404 I got 6 hours ago now makes a bit more sense..
jamesfisher
Reminder the Vercel CEO is a genocide supporter, if you need more reasons to move away from it.
show comments
nothinkjustai
Looks like their rampant vibe coding is starting to catch up to them. Expect to see many pre vulns like this in the future.
raw_anon_1111
Why does anyone running a third party tool have access to all of their clients’ accounts? I can’t imagine something this stupid happening with a real service provider.
I see Vercel is hosted on AWS? Are they hosting every one on a single AWS account with no tenant isolating? Something this dumb could never happen on a real AWS account. Yes I know the internal controls that AWS has (former employee).
Anyone who is hosting a real business on Vercel should have known better.
I have used v0 to build a few admin sites. But I downloaded the artifacts, put in a Docker container and hosted everything in Lambda myself where I controlled the tenant isolation via separate AWS accounts, secrets in Secret Manager and tightly scoped IAM roles, etc.
show comments
jimmydoe
what's the cause of the breach?
0xy
This is why you pay a real provider for serious business needs, not an AWS reseller. Next.js is a fundamentally insecure framework, as server components are an anti-pattern full of magic leading to stuff like the below. Given their standards for framework security, it's not hard to believe their business' control plane is just as insecure (and probably built using the same insecure framework).
Next.js is the new PHP, but worse, since unlike PHP you don't really know what's server side and what's client side anymore. It's all just commingled and handled magically.
There is no serious reason to use Vercel, other than for those being locked into the NextJs ecosystem and demo projects.
show comments
mikert89
Much as I want to rip on vercel, its clear that ai is going to lead to mass security breaches. The attack surface is so large, and ai agents are working around the clock. This is a new normal. Open source software is going to change, companies wont be running random repos off github anymore
I've been part of a response team on a security incident and I really feel for them. However, this initial communication is terrible.
Something happened, we won't say what, but it was severe enough to notify law enforcement. What floors me is the only actionable advice is to "review environment variables". What should a customer even do with that advice? Make sure the variable are still there? How would you know if any of them were exposed or leaked?
The advice should be to IMMEDIATELY rotate all passwords, access tokens, and any sensitive information shared with Vercel. And then begin to audit access logs, customer data, etc, for unusual activity.
The only reason to dramatically overpay for the hosting resources they provide is because you expect them to expertly manage security and stability.
I know there is a huge fog of uncertainly in the early stages of an incident, but it spooks me how intentionally vague they seem to be here about what happened and who has been impacted.
They just added more details:
> Indicators of compromise (IOCs)
> Our investigation has revealed that the incident originated from a third-party AI tool whose Google Workspace OAuth app was the subject of a broader compromise, potentially affecting hundreds of its users across many organizations.
> We are publishing the following IOC to support the wider community in the investigation and vetting of potential malicious activity in their environments. We recommend that Google Workspace Administrators and Google Account owners check for usage of this app immediately.
> OAuth App: 110671459871-30f1spbu0hptbs60cb4vsmv79i7bbvqj.apps.googleusercontent.com
https://vercel.com/kb/bulletin/vercel-april-2026-security-in...
I'm on a macbook pro, Google Chrome 147.0.7727.56.
Clicking the Vercel logo at the top left of the page hard crashes my Chrome app. Like, immediate crash.
What an interesting bug.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824426
https://x.com/theo/status/2045862972342313374
> I have reason to believe this is credible.
https://x.com/theo/status/2045870216555499636
> Env vars marked as sensitive are safe. Ones NOT marked as sensitive should be rolled out of precaution
https://x.com/theo/status/2045871215705747965
> Everything I know about this hack suggests it could happen to any host
https://x.com/DiffeKey/status/2045813085408051670
> Vercel has reportedly been breached by ShinyHunters.
Incidents like this are a good reminder of how concentrated our single points of failure have become in the modern web ecosystem. I appreciate the transparency in their disclosure so far, but it definitely makes you re-evaluate the risk profile of leaning entirely on fully managed PaaS solutions.
Is this one of those situations where _a lot_ of customers are affected and the “subset” are just the bigger ones they can’t afford to lose?
The lack of details makes me wonder how large this "subset" of users really is
This announcement in its current form is quite useless and not actionable. As least people won’t be able to say “why didn’t you say something sooner?” They said _something_
Use VPS, nowadays with the help of AI it's a lot easier to set everything up, you don't need Versel at all. And of course way cheaper
So, the Vercel post says a number of customers were impacted, but not everyone, and they will contact the people that were impacted. I wasn't contacted so does that mean I'm safe?
I don't get why everything is not marked as sensitive in env vars by default instead.
We run on Vercel and I wonder if / how long before we're alerted about a leak. Quick look online suggests environment variables marked as sensitive are ok, but to which extent I wonder.
> incident response provider
So they use third-party for incident management? They are de-risking by spending more, which is a loose-loose for the customers.
The point I am taking away here is to never use Vercel's environment variables to store secrets.
Time to ipo
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45416353
Oy vey: https://x.com/theo/status/2045862972342313374?s=46
https://x.com/theo/status/2045871215705747965 - "Everything I know about this hack suggests it could happen to any host"
He also suggests in another post that Linear and GitHub could also be pwned?
Either way, hugops to all the SRE/DevOps out there, seems like it's going to be a busy Sunday for many.
Hmmm, the dashboard 404 I got 6 hours ago now makes a bit more sense..
Reminder the Vercel CEO is a genocide supporter, if you need more reasons to move away from it.
Looks like their rampant vibe coding is starting to catch up to them. Expect to see many pre vulns like this in the future.
Why does anyone running a third party tool have access to all of their clients’ accounts? I can’t imagine something this stupid happening with a real service provider.
I see Vercel is hosted on AWS? Are they hosting every one on a single AWS account with no tenant isolating? Something this dumb could never happen on a real AWS account. Yes I know the internal controls that AWS has (former employee).
Anyone who is hosting a real business on Vercel should have known better.
I have used v0 to build a few admin sites. But I downloaded the artifacts, put in a Docker container and hosted everything in Lambda myself where I controlled the tenant isolation via separate AWS accounts, secrets in Secret Manager and tightly scoped IAM roles, etc.
what's the cause of the breach?
This is why you pay a real provider for serious business needs, not an AWS reseller. Next.js is a fundamentally insecure framework, as server components are an anti-pattern full of magic leading to stuff like the below. Given their standards for framework security, it's not hard to believe their business' control plane is just as insecure (and probably built using the same insecure framework).
Next.js is the new PHP, but worse, since unlike PHP you don't really know what's server side and what's client side anymore. It's all just commingled and handled magically.
https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-bulletins/rss/aws-2...
There is no serious reason to use Vercel, other than for those being locked into the NextJs ecosystem and demo projects.
Much as I want to rip on vercel, its clear that ai is going to lead to mass security breaches. The attack surface is so large, and ai agents are working around the clock. This is a new normal. Open source software is going to change, companies wont be running random repos off github anymore