OpenAI has patched a major vulnerability in its recently released ChatGPT app for macOS that stored users’ conversations with the popular AI chatbot on their Mac in plain text — reports The Verge.
The ChatGPT creator launched a standalone Mac app for the chatbot on June 25. Until Friday, however, any conversation users had with the ChatGPT macOS app was stored locally on their Mac — in plain text, no less. This meant that a bad actor or malicious app with access to your machine could easily retrieve and read your conversations with ChatGPT and whatever data they contained.
OpenAI has since released an update for the ChatGPT macOS app that encrypts the conversations. “We are aware of this issue and have shipped a new version of the application which encrypts these conversations,” an OpenAI spokesperson told The Verge. “We’re committed to providing a helpful user experience while maintaining our high security standards as our technology evolves.”
The flaw was first discovered by Pedro José Pereira, who revealed his findings in a post on Threads. “I was curious about why [OpenAI] opted out of using the app sandbox protections and ended up checking where they stored the app data,” Pereira told The Verge.
OpenAI only offers the ChatGPT app for Mac through its own website, allowing it to bypass Apple’s sandboxing requirements for software distributed through the App Store. Apple’s recommended sandboxing measures would have prevented the issue from existing in the first place.
Pereira was able to create a simple app that accessed files stored by the ChatGPT macOS app and displayed the text of conversations conducted within it. However, Pereira’s app was no longer able to access or read the chats following the update OpenAI released.
Designed to integrate smoothly with macOS, OpenAI’s ChatGPT app is compatible with macOS 14 and requires a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer).
OpenAI is expected to debut a Windows version of the ChatGPT desktop app later this year. Also later this year, ChatGPT will make its way to iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15. OpenAI last week also delayed the launch of the highly anticipated ChatGPT Voice Mode.
You can click here to download the latest version of ChatGPT for macOS.
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