How over 2,000 live Bubble apps left their editors public

TipLister · 2024-09-11T12:57:00.509Z

note that many hobby projects or attempted startups are at such initial stages, e.g. just two friends building features together, with just test data in them, that it does not always matter.

i do recommend bubble to send an automated mail to users whenever this setting is turned on, once a month, as i bet lots of people forget after just asking one other bubbler to help with a hard feature.

is it embarrassing that live projects with live data, even if its just 10% of the apps found, have this? for sure. especially agencies

georgecollier · 2024-09-11T13:02:05.412Z

TipLister:

i do recommend bubble to send an automated mail to users whenever this setting is turned on, once a month

Yep, I told them this.

TipLister:

just two friends building features together, with just test data in them, that it does not always matter.

That was an initial concern of mine before I completed the analysis, but it turned out to be a non-issue. This dataset only involves live apps that are currently on paid Bubble plans, so filters out most cases like these as, people will generally not be paying for Bubble if it’s not being used (-> less likely to be in the study). Of course, there’s always some exceptions, but when I went through the results, cases like the one you mention turned out to be pretty rare. Additionally, if this case was widespread, it would make the agency built app results even worse!

TipLister:

especially agencies

Yup, that’s the part I care most about at the moment. Hobbyist/non-technical founder not knowing any better is one thing, but an agency should be on top of this issue which is probably the most basic (and serious) issue that could exist. If over 10% of agency built apps have public editors, imagine how many have no privacy rules (spoiler, it’s a lot, because I’ve audited them and had to dig clients out of the )

Other feedback I told Bubble was:

Live apps shouldn’t be allowed to have a public editor unless on agency plan (or it should be very difficult to make the editor public on a live app, with lots of checkboxes saying you understand the risk)…
Notifications should be sent regularly
If public for more than a week, auto-private it by default unless they’ve actively disabled that option in the editor.

TipLister · 2024-09-11T13:06:41.806Z

must be that agencies are trying to get around paying with multiple editors

georgecollier · 2024-09-11T13:07:46.395Z

Yep, that’s the main reason. Also making it public to get help from team members, and forgetting to make it private. I noticed one of my previous clients showed up in the audit - turned out a new agency they onboarded while we were busy made it public

mac2 · 2024-09-11T13:08:48.995Z

George grow up and leave your editor open - it’s freeing

boston85719 · 2024-09-11T13:08:49.068Z

georgecollier:

Gold agencies perform slightly better on average which is good news, but the fact remains: even among the “best,” nearly 1 in 10 apps is left wide open, and the Gold rate

Please don’t encourage the misconception that gold is supposed to be ‘best’…Bubble made a HUGE mistake in ranking names, as they stated intention of ranking is size and not quality, but obviously most rational and logical thinkers assume gold, silver or bronze is representative of quality and not size.

Thanks for the insights here. Can’t imagine how many hours it took to audit 18,000 apps.

georgecollier · 2024-09-11T13:11:34.052Z

boston85719:

Please don’t encourage the misconception that gold is supposed to be ‘best’…Bubble made a HUGE mistake in ranking names, as they stated intention of ranking is size and not quality, but obviously most rational and logical thinkers assume gold, silver or bronze is representative of quality and not size.

100% correct. Previously, before agency tiers, Bubble could fairly reasonably not be involved in controlling the marketplace at all. That changed the second they implemented tiers - once they added tiers, they effectively endorsed some agencies (even if only by size) so much so that the reasonable person would think it amounts to an increased trust/quality rating. It’s not ‘Bubble approved’ or ‘Bubble assured’, more like ‘Bubble likes the revenue this agency generates’. Which is fine, so long as the tiers don’t give the impression of Bubble approved, which they currently do.

boston85719 · 2024-09-11T13:13:50.679Z

Yes…perhaps in the post changing word from ‘best’ to biggest would help promote that Gold tier is just Large.

@fede.bubble could you ask the team if there is any consideration to change tier names to reflect more accurately what they are representing?

georgecollier · 2024-09-11T13:14:27.439Z

Oh I should say, come to DevDay if you want to learn some more curiosities about Bubble app security beyond the basics of privacy rules… mixed presentation + discussion so we can all share and improve. DevDay: Practical security lessons from auditing 18,000 Bubble apps

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stuart8 · 2024-09-11T15:40:06.318Z

Wow, I imagine this was a ton of work. Kudos for doing it and hopefully it leads to some checking by other users and perhaps some more thoughts by Bubble, that suggestion for a monthly email for those who keep it public totally makes sense!

Security in Bubble is a topic that is almost as confusing as WUs when you dive deep into all the permissions

jonah.deleseleuc · 2024-09-12T12:52:12.437Z

I like this case study.

Another exploit I have found quite prevalent in Bubble apps is that client-side API calls (API calls made inside of a Repeating Group for example) can often be exploited since tokens are exposed to the client side. By sniffing around in the network tab of the browser, you can find the tokens which are generated by these API calls.

Since the parameters of the API call are dynamically being populated from the client side (the keys are not private, which is true 99% of the time) the malicious actor can simply swap these values for whatever they choose and can do all sorts of harm to your app / brand or even users.

For example, if the “destination” of a payment was supposed to be person A but you swap it out to person B, you can do some pretty nasty stuff with this!

georgecollier · 2024-09-12T17:28:22.593Z

Thank you to the agencies that have gotten in touch to ask if any of their apps were public! If only all agencies were so proactive

Fortunately, if you didn’t hear from me already then your agency wasn’t a terrible offender by either proportion of public apps or absolute number of public apps. I tried to contact any agencies with more than 50% public editors or more than 5 public apps, so even if you didn’t hear from me there still could be apps that affect you. Just drop me a DM if you want to know which ones are affected so you can secure them if necessary.

senecadatabase · 2024-09-12T20:33:54.210Z

Thanks @georgecollier that’s all interesting.

You give a lot back to the forum.

Jici · 2024-09-12T22:58:17.695Z

Very interesting. I totally think that agency left them open to work on the project with both collaborators or client. Often, it’s client that open their app.

I really think that Bubble should, at least, show a warning popup each time you open editor that app is visible to everyone and where to go to change this settings.
(@fede.bubble )

However, did you consider to exclude “plugins apps” that need to be set to public view mode if author want to share how it’s working in editor?

georgecollier · 2024-09-12T23:01:34.619Z

Jici:

did you consider to exclude “plugins apps”

Yes, test apps, template apps, and apps with no custom domain were excluded as these are all likely to be demo/tutorial/test apps. Only live apps with paid plans and custom domains are included!

hergin · 2024-09-12T23:16:16.967Z

How do you get the list of all Bubble apps? I am guessing you collaborate with Bubble?

jared.gibb · 2024-09-12T23:27:02.570Z

georgecollier:

18,000

How did you get that list? Also, did you do this manually?

georgecollier · 2024-09-13T05:12:45.343Z

hergin:

I am guessing you collaborate with Bubble?

No

jared.gibb:

How did you get that list?

A few sources - mainly tech stack detectors.

senecadatabase · 2024-09-13T10:39:52.217Z

Thank you @georgecollier.

I’ve learned so much from you.

aleemansari97 · 2024-09-13T12:29:50.737Z

These numbers are wild!

I once worked on an app built by a “Gold” tier agency that I often considered working for, the app was nowhere near the standard of what I had imagined a “Gold” tier to have. They also had the public editor problem