A new report has found 10 major vulnerabilities in Perplexity’s Android app as it reportedly tries to partner with some of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers.
, days before the Super Bowl, Aravind Srinivas, CEO of AI search startup Perplexity , gave users a sparkly incentive to install its app. He posted onthat instead of buying a Super Bowl ad, the company would give $1 million to one lucky user who downloaded Perplexity ’s app, referred it to their friends and asked it five questions during the game, a move to lure more people for a chance to win the grand sum. “Ask like a millionaire,” he said.
But the company’s Android app, which offers not only search capabilities but also acts as an AI assistant, is riddled with a host of security issues that could expose its users to data theft, account takeovers and impersonation attacks from malicious hackers, according to a report by India-based mobile security company. One of these gaps also lets anyone access Perplexity’s API for free, exposing the company itself to the risk of losing revenue.
Security researcher and Appknox CEO Subho Halder said it’s easy to make clones of Perplexity’s Android app because its code is embedded with what’s called “hardcoded secrets” — sensitive information like passwords and API keys , which can be extracted by an attacker. The cloned app can then be used to trick users into believing it’s the real one, enabling hacks to collect private data like login information and uploaded documents.
Perplexity rolled out its agent-like AI assistant for Android devices in January, which it claimed could carry out tasks like booking an Uber, playing a video on YouTube, finding songs on Spotify and making reservations all on its own. But the slew of security flaws has been uncovered just as Perplexity,in talks to raise funding at an $18 billion valuation, tries to find new ways to distribute its mobile app to more users and put it in more people’s hands.
Safety in the world of AI often focuses on the models themselves–ensuring that they’re producing accurate information and aren’t affected by bias. This report underscores the idea that securing the application where people interact with the models is just as important, Halder toldHalder’s advice to users is to remove Perplexity’s Android app from the phone until the issues are resolved.
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