• Vates 3 hours ago

    When one OAuth token can compromise dev tools, CI pipeline, secrets and deployment simultaneously, something architectural has gone wrong. Vercel have had React2Shell (CVSS 10), the middleware bypass (CVSS 9.1), and now this, all within 12 months.

    At what point do we start asking questions about the concentration of trust in the web ecosystem?

    It's funny that at the engineering level we are continuously grilled in interviews about the single responsibility principle, meanwhile the industry's business model is to undermine the entirety of web standards and consolidate the web stack into a CLI.

    • nnurmanov 2 hours ago

      You have no idea how indifferent security officers can be-even when you point out critical issues. The other day, we flagged that a customer’s database had users with excessive privileges. Their only question: “Can this be exploited from the outside?”

      No, but most breaches today come from compromised internal accounts that are then used to break everything.

      • piyh an hour ago

        JavaScript living only as a built artifact in an s3 bucket makes for a much simpler life.

      • toddmorey 12 hours ago

        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.

        • btown 8 hours ago

          Via the incident page:

          > Environment variables marked as "sensitive" in Vercel are stored in a manner that prevents them from being read, and we currently do not have evidence that those values were accessed. However, if any of your environment variables contain secrets (API keys, tokens, database credentials, signing keys) that were not marked as sensitive, those values should be treated as potentially exposed and rotated as a priority.

          https://vercel.com/kb/bulletin/vercel-april-2026-security-in... as of 4:22p ET

          • aziaziazi 7 hours ago

            The “sensitive” toggle is off by default. I’m curious about the rationale, what's the benefit of this default for users and/or Vercel?

            https://vercel.com/docs/environment-variables/sensitive-envi...

            • loloquwowndueo 7 hours ago

              Sensitive environment variables are environment variables whose values are non-readable once created.

              So they are harder to introspect and review once set.

              It’s probably good practice to put non-secret-material in non-sensitive variables.

              (Pure speculation, I’ve never used Vercel)

              • _heimdall 6 hours ago

                I have used Vercel though prefer other hosts.

                There are cases where I want env variables to be considered non-secure and fine to be read later, I have one in a current project that defines the email address used as the From address for automated emails for example.

                In my opinion the lack of security should be opt-in rather than opt-out though. Meaning it should be considered secure by default with an option to make it readable.

              • throw03172019 6 hours ago

                Simpler for vibe coders.

              • jtchang 6 hours ago

                How does the app read the variable if it can't be read after you input it? Or do they mean you can't view it after providing the variable value to the UI?

                • ctmnt 4 hours ago

                  They mean the latter. Very unclear how that translates to meaningful security.

              • birdsongs 12 hours ago

                Seriously. Why am I reading about this here and not via an email? I've been a paying customer for over a year now. My online news aggregator informs me before the actual company itself does?

                • shimman 11 hours ago

                  Please remember that this is the same company that couldn't figure out how to authorize 3rd party middleware and had, with what should be a company ending, critical vulnerability .

                  Oh and the owner likes to proudly remind people about his work on Google AMP, a product that has done major damage to the open web.

                  This is who they are: a bunch of incompetent engineers that play with pension funds + gulf money.

                  • 1970-01-01 8 hours ago

                    I just deleted my account. Their laid-back notice just is not worth it anymore. I will hold them accountable using my cash. You can get out with me. Let their apologies hit your spam filter. They need to be better prepared to react to the storm of insanity that comes with a breach or they lose my info (lose it twice, I guess..)

                    • salomonk_mur 4 hours ago

                      Says they emailed affected customers...

                    • gherkinnn 7 hours ago

                      Last year Vercel bungled the security response to a vulnerability in Next's middleware. This is nothing new.

                      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448723

                      https://xcancel.com/javasquip/status/1903480443158298994

                      • tcp_handshaker 7 hours ago

                        Security is hard and there are only three vendors I trust: AWS, Google and IBM ( yes IBM ). Anything else is just asking for trouble.

                        • esseph 6 hours ago

                          Having worked both public and private, I can agree with this.

                          Google in particular has been staggeringly good, and don't sleep on IBM when they Actually Care.

                          • dd_xplore 6 hours ago

                            Oracle too

                            • gustavus 5 hours ago

                              Oracle? Oracle?

                              The Oracle that published an announcement that said "we didn't get hacked" when the hackers had private customer info?

                              The Oracle that does not allow you to do any security testing on their software unless you use one of their approved vendors?

                              The Oracle that one of my customers uses where they have to turn off the HR portal for 2 weeks before annual performance evaluations because there is no way to prevent people from seeing things?

                              The only reason Oracle isn't having nightmarish security problems published every other week is because they threaten to sue anyone that does find an issue.

                              Oracle is a joke in every conceivable way and I despise them on a personal level.

                              • warmedcookie 4 hours ago

                                I love a good cathartic rant

                          • 0xmattf 12 hours ago

                            > The only reason to dramatically overpay for the hosting resources they provide is because you expect them to expertly manage security and stability.

                            This and because it's so convenient to click some buttons and have your application running. I've stopped being lazy, though. Moved everything from Render to linode. I was paying render $50+/month. Now I'm paying $3-5.

                            I would never use one of those hosting providers again.

                            • cleaning 6 hours ago

                              If you're only paying $3-5 on Linode then your level of usage would probably be comfortably at $0 on Vercel.

                              • arch-choot 2 minutes ago

                                Repeating a prior comment I've made about this[0]: I run a rust webserver on a €4 VPS from hetzner that serves 300M (million) requests a day.

                                From what I can figure out, Vercel charges "$0.60 per million invocations" [1], which would cost me $180 per day.

                                [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47611454 [1] https://vercel.com/docs/functions/usage-and-pricing#invocati...

                                • 00deadbeef 33 minutes ago

                                  What if they have an actual back-end with long-running processes and scheduled tasks?

                                  • 0xmattf 6 hours ago

                                    It could be $0 on Render too, but then there's going to be a 3 minute load time for a landing page to become visible, lol. So if you don't want your server to sleep, you're going to have to pay $20/month.

                                    Does Vercel do the same?

                                    • somewhatgoated 4 hours ago

                                      No, I run several small websites on Vercel for free for years, always served static pages very quickly

                                    • cleaning 2 hours ago

                                      No.

                                    • esseph 6 hours ago

                                      Makes sense considering the quality of Vercel's security response and customer communication.

                                    • nightski 11 hours ago

                                      Looking at linode, those prices get you an instance with 1Gb of ram and a mediocre CPU. So you are running all of your applications on that?

                                      • 0xmattf 10 hours ago

                                        Personal projects/MVPs/small projects? Absolutely. For what I'm running, there's no reason to need anything beyond that.

                                        The point is, I used to just throw everything up on a PaaS. Heroku/Render, etc. and pay way more than I needed to, even if I had 0 users, lol.

                                        • adhamsalama 8 hours ago

                                          For $3.5, Hetzner gives 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40 GB SSD, and 10 TB of bandwidth.

                                          • eatery1234 3 hours ago

                                            Pretty oversold iirc, but then again, that's the same for Linode

                                            • skeeter2020 7 hours ago

                                              how much work should the GP do to migrate if Linode is good enough, to potentially save up to $1.50/month (or spend 50 cents more)?

                                          • p_stuart82 7 hours ago

                                            exactly people paid the premium so somebody else's OAuth screwup wouldn't become their Sunday. and here we are.

                                          • lo1tuma 7 hours ago

                                            Yeah, given there insane pricing I think the expectations can be higher. Although I know it is impossible to provide 100% secure system, but if something like that happens, then the communication should at least be better. Don’t wait until you have talked to the lawyers... inform your customers first, ideally without this cooperate BS speak, most vercel customers are probably developers, so they understand that incidents like this can happen, just be transparent about it

                                            • rybosome 11 hours ago

                                              Completely agreed. At minimum they should be advising secret rotation.

                                              The only possibility for that not being a reasonable starting point is if they think the malicious actors still have access and will just exfiltrate rotated secrets as well. Otherwise this is deflection in an attempt to salvage credibility.

                                              • elmo2you 8 hours ago

                                                Welcome to the show.

                                                While a different kind of incident (in hindsight), the other week Webflow had a serious operational incident.

                                                Sites across the globe going down (no clue if all or just a part of them). They posted plenty of messages, I think for about 12 hours, but mostly with the same content/message: "working on fixing this with an upstream provider" (paraphrased). No meaningful info about what was the actual problem or impact.

                                                Only the next day did somebody write about what happened. Essentially a database running out of storage space. How that became a single point of failure, to at least plenty of customers: no clue. Sounds like bad architecture to me though. But what personally rubbed me the wrong way most of all, was the insistence on their "dashboard" having indicated anything wrong with their database deployment, as it allegedly had misrepresented the used/allocated storage. I don't who this upstream service provider of Webflow is, but I know plenty about server maintenance.

                                                Either that upstream provider didn't provide a crucial metric (on-disk storage use) on their "dashboard", or Webflow was throwing this provider under the bus for what may have been their own ignorant/incompetent database server management. I guess it all depends to which extend this database was a managed service or something Webflow had more direct control over. Either way, with any clue about the provider or service missing from their post-mortem, customers can only guess as to who was to blame for the outage.

                                                I have a feeling that we probably aren't the only customer they lost over this. Which in our case would probably not have happened, if they had communicated things in a different way. For context: I personally would never need nor recommend something like Webflow, but I do understand why it might be the right fit for people in a different position. That is, as long as it doesn't break down like it did. I still can't quite wrap my head around that apparent single point of failure for a company the size of Webflow though.

                                                /anecdote

                                              • nettlin 9 hours ago

                                                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...

                                                • dev360 8 hours ago

                                                  I wonder which tool that is

                                                • jtreminio 14 hours ago

                                                  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.

                                                  • embedding-shape 12 hours ago

                                                    Huh, curiously; I'm on Arch Linux, crash happens in Google Chrome (147.0.7727.101) for me too, but not in Firefox (149.0.2) nor even in Chromium (147.0.7727.101).

                                                    I find it fun we're all reading a story how Vercel likely is compromised somehow, and managed to reproduce a crash on their webpage, so now we all give it a try. Surely could never backfire :)

                                                    • nozzlegear 12 hours ago

                                                      Works in Safari too. Sounds like a Google Chrome thing.

                                                      • sbrother 10 hours ago

                                                        Following since I just reproduced the crash on my own system (Chrome on Ubuntu)

                                                      • eclipticplane 2 hours ago

                                                        Same thing here, 147.0.7727.101, M3 Macbook Air. Immediate crash of all open profile windows, so not even a tab-level crash.

                                                        • bel8 8 hours ago

                                                          Sadly I coudn't make Chrome crash here. Would be fun.

                                                          Chrome Version 147.0.7727.101 (Official Build) (64-bit). Windows 11 Pro.

                                                          Video: https://imgur.com/a/pq6P4si

                                                          I use uBlock Origin Lite. Maybe it blocks some crash causing script? edit: still no crash when I disabled UBO.

                                                          • devld 11 hours ago

                                                            Reminds me of circa 2021 Chromium bug where opening the dropdown menu on GitHub would crash the entire system on Linux. At some point, it got fixed.

                                                            • Malipeddi 12 hours ago

                                                              Same with Chrome on Windows 11. I opened the vercel home page using the url once after which it stopped crashing when clicking on the logo.

                                                              • burnte 13 hours ago

                                                                I'm running 147.0.7727.57 and this doesn't happen. Macbook Air M5. VERY interesting.

                                                                • plexicle 12 hours ago

                                                                  MBP - M4 Max - Chrome 146.0.7680.178.

                                                                  No crash.

                                                                  Now I don't want to click that "Finish update" button.

                                                                  • 152334H 11 hours ago

                                                                    if it does so happen that the crash originates from a browser exploit, you should expect to be more at risk due to the absence of a crash on an older version, not less

                                                                  • farnulfo 14 hours ago

                                                                    Same hard crash on Chrome Windows 11

                                                                    • itaintmagic 13 hours ago

                                                                      Do you have a chrome://crashes/ entry ?

                                                                      • rapfaria 13 hours ago

                                                                        it did add an entry - windows 11, chrome

                                                                    • MattIPv4 14 hours ago

                                                                      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.

                                                                      • tom1337 9 hours ago

                                                                        > Ones NOT marked as sensitive should be rolled out of precaution

                                                                        if it's not marked as sensitive (because it is not sensitive) there is no reason to roll them. if you must roll a insensitive env var it should've been sensitive in the first place, no?

                                                                        • jackconsidine 8 hours ago

                                                                          There's a difference between sensitive, private and public. If public (i.e. NEXT_PUBLIC_) then yeah likely not a reason to roll. Private keys that aren't explicitly sensitive probably are still sensitive. It doesn't seem to be the default to have things "sensitive" and I can't tell if that's a new classification or has always been there.

                                                                          I can imagine the reason why an env variable would be sensitive, but need to be re-read at some point. But overwhelmingly it makes sense for the default to be set, and never access again (i.e. Fly env values, GCP secret manager etc)

                                                                        • otterley 13 hours ago

                                                                          Who is this “theo” person and why are multiple people quoting him? He seems to have little to say that’s substantive at this point.

                                                                          • gordonhart 13 hours ago

                                                                            He’s a tech influencer, probably getting quoted here because he has the biggest reach of people covering this so far.

                                                                            • MikeNotThePope 13 hours ago

                                                                              Theo Browne is a reasonably well known YouTuber & YC founder.

                                                                              https://t3.gg/

                                                                              • Aurornis 9 hours ago

                                                                                He’s a streamer who talks about tech. Previously had a sponsorship relationship with Vercel so is theoretically more well connected than average on the topic. He’s also very divisive because he does a lot of ragebait, grievance reporting, and contrarian takes but famously has blind spots for a few companies and technologies that he’s favored in past videos or been sponsored by. I have friends who watch a lot of his videos but I’ve never been able to get into it.

                                                                                • nothinkjustai 12 hours ago

                                                                                  He is a paid Vercel shill (literally, he does sponsored content for them on his YouTube channel)

                                                                                • reactordev 12 hours ago

                                                                                  YT tech vlogger

                                                                              • nike-17 12 hours ago

                                                                                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 12 hours ago

                                                                                  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?

                                                                                  • toddmorey 12 hours ago

                                                                                    Conjecture, but the wording "limited subset" rarely turns out to be good news. Usually a provider will say "less than 1% of our users" or some specific number when they can to ease concerns. My guess is they don't have the visibility or they don't like the number.

                                                                                    I feel for the team; security incidents suck. I know they are working hard, I hope they start to communicate more openly and transparently.

                                                                                    • loloquwowndueo 12 hours ago

                                                                                      “Less than 1% of our users” means 10k affected users if you have 1 million users. 10k victims is a lot! Imagine “air travel is safe, only a subset of 1% of travellers die”

                                                                                  • OsrsNeedsf2P 14 hours ago

                                                                                    The lack of details makes me wonder how large this "subset" of users really is

                                                                                    • gib444 9 hours ago

                                                                                      I remember working support and being told "always say 'subset' unless you absolutely know it's exactly 100% of customers" lol

                                                                                      • jofzar 2 hours ago

                                                                                        Same, there was always very specific wording we had to use unless legal approved an exact number or scope.

                                                                                      • bossyTeacher 12 hours ago

                                                                                        The lack of details itself is telling enough. Whatever comes out will be no doubt PR sanitised and some bigger clumps of truth won't make it through the PR process.

                                                                                      • jtokoph 12 hours ago

                                                                                        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 8 hours ago

                                                                                          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

                                                                                          • sergiotapia 27 minutes ago

                                                                                            Is the calculus breaking for these cloud providers? They are vibe coding at unsustainable speeds and shit is just breaking left and right.

                                                                                            Has anyone made the move to self hosting on their own servers again?

                                                                                            • arabsson 12 hours ago

                                                                                              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?

                                                                                              • adithyasrin 13 hours ago

                                                                                                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.

                                                                                                • neom 14 hours ago

                                                                                                  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.

                                                                                                  • phillipcarter 13 hours ago

                                                                                                    I don't know if I'd trust some random programmer-streamer-influencer on anything other than the topic of streamer-influencing.

                                                                                                    • hvb2 13 hours ago

                                                                                                      The link at the top of the page it to vercel acknowledging it...

                                                                                                      • phillipcarter 11 hours ago

                                                                                                        Vercel acknowledges a security incident, which nobody is claiming doesn't exist. What they don't acknowledge are this person's vague implications about impact elsewhere.

                                                                                                    • embedding-shape 14 hours ago

                                                                                                      Based on what, "feels like it"? Claiming that Cloudflare is affected by the same hack has to come from somewhere, but where is that coming from?

                                                                                                      • gruez 13 hours ago

                                                                                                        from his "sources".

                                                                                                        > Here’s what I’ve managed to get from my sources:

                                                                                                        >3. The method of compromise was likely used to hit multiple companies other than Vercel.

                                                                                                        https://x.com/theo/status/2045870216555499636

                                                                                                        To be fair journalists often do this too, eg. "[company] was breached, people within the company claim"

                                                                                                        • eddythompson80 13 hours ago

                                                                                                          Isn’t he a Vercel evangelist though?

                                                                                                          • TiredOfLife 10 hours ago

                                                                                                            He quite publicly is not anymore.

                                                                                                            • troupo 13 hours ago

                                                                                                              He is "whatever gives me short-term boost in popularity". Including doing 180 turns on whatever he's evangelizing or bashing.

                                                                                                              • eddythompson80 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                Fair enough. That’s probably a better description from what I’ve seen from him. I remember that arc browser shilling.

                                                                                                                • Barbing 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                  Good for the content but would sponsors be on board long term?

                                                                                                                  • brazukadev 11 hours ago

                                                                                                                    Let's see. Roasting vercel is more popular than defending but his posts so far he seems to be defending and arguing in the replies.

                                                                                                            • recursivegirth 13 hours ago

                                                                                                              Ah, Theo with his vast insights and connections into everything. That man gets around, and his content is worth it's cost.

                                                                                                              Theo's content boils down to the same boring formula. 1. Whatever buzzword headline is trending at the time 2. Immediate sponsored ad that is supposed to make you sympathize with Theo cause he "vets" his sponsors. 3. The man makes you listen to a "that totally happened" story that he somehow always involved himself personally. 4. Man serves you up an ad for his t3.chat and how it's the greatest thing in the world and how he should be paid more for his infinite wisdom. 5. A rag on Claude or OpenAI (whichever is leading at the time) 6. 5-10 minutes of paraphrasing an article without critical thought or analysis on the video topic.

                                                                                                              I used to enjoy his content when he was still in his Ping era, but it's clear hes drunken the YT marketer kool-aid. I've moved on, his content gets recommend now and again, but I can't entertain his non-sense anymore.

                                                                                                              • rubslopes 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                I just wanted to chime in and say I think he is knowledgeable; he's not a con. I know you didn't say that, but people might have the impression he doesn't know what he's talking about. He does know, and I've learned quite a lot from him in the past.

                                                                                                                However, since the LLM Cambria explosion, he has become very clickbaity, and his content has become shallow. I don't watch his videos anymore.

                                                                                                                • sgarland 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                  Not that I ever had confidence in his technical knowledge, but it went to zero when he confidently asserted that there was no possible way a single server could handle the massive traffic some NextJS app he had made was serving. He then posted the bill - which was about $5K IIRC - and I was able to determine from the billed runtime and memory that a modestly-spec’d RPi could in fact handle it.

                                                                                                                  • well_ackshually 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                    > he's not a con.

                                                                                                                    When you're putting the bar that low, sure.

                                                                                                                    He's about as knowledgeable as the junior you hired last week, except that he speaks from a position of authority and gets retweeted by the entire JS slop sphere. He's LinkedIn slop for Gen Z.

                                                                                                                  • neom 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                    I don't watch his content, but I felt comfortable posting his link as I believe he's generally considered a reputable guy? His tweets sometimes come up in my for you tab and he seems reasonable and knowledgable generally? Maybe I'm wrong and shouldn't have linked to him as a source.

                                                                                                                    • steve_adams_86 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                      He's kind of like an LLM in that his content has the surface texture of something substantial, and sometimes it's backed by substance, yet it's often half-true or totally off the mark too. You'll notice if you're previously acquainted with what he's talking about, otherwise he seems to be as you described.

                                                                                                                      I don't think he's a bad guy or that he's trying to be misleading. I suspect he wants his content to actually carry value, but he produces too much for that to be possible. Primarily he's a performer, not a technologist.

                                                                                                                      • arabsson 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                        I agree with this comment. YouTube's summarize this video feature has been a godsend when it comes to Theo's videos.

                                                                                                                      • threetonesun 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                        Nothing on x.com is reputable at this point.

                                                                                                                    • techpression 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                      ”Any host” of what? That’s such a non-descriptive statement and clearly not true at face value.

                                                                                                                      • rvz 14 hours ago

                                                                                                                        I do remember that OpenAI did use Vercel a year ago. They might have likely moved off of it to something better.

                                                                                                                        • pxc 4 hours ago

                                                                                                                          OpenAI owns Contexts.ai, doesn't it?

                                                                                                                        • nozzlegear 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                          > @theo: "I have reason to believe this is credible. If you are using Vercel, it’s a good idea to roll your secrets and env vars."

                                                                                                                          > @ErdalToprak: "And use your own vps or k3s cluster there’s no reason in 2026 to delegate your infra to a middle man except if you’re at AWS level needs"

                                                                                                                          > @theo: "This is still a stupid take"

                                                                                                                          lol, okay. Thanks for the insight, Theo, whoever you are.

                                                                                                                          • uxhacker 10 hours ago

                                                                                                                            What is AWS level needs?

                                                                                                                            • raw_anon_1111 9 hours ago

                                                                                                                              Hell doing this with fixed price AWS Lightsale based services would be better.

                                                                                                                              • nozzlegear 9 hours ago

                                                                                                                                You'll have to ask @ErdalToprak on Twitter on that one. I just thought it was funny that this slopfluencer, who's taken money to advertise Vercel, ostensibly believes that using a VPS/k3s is "a stupid take."

                                                                                                                              • nozzlegear 3 hours ago

                                                                                                                                Theo subscribers didn't like this one

                                                                                                                            • jngiam1 6 hours ago

                                                                                                                              I don't get why everything is not marked as sensitive in env vars by default instead.

                                                                                                                              • oxag3n 9 hours ago

                                                                                                                                > 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.

                                                                                                                                • staticassertion 3 hours ago

                                                                                                                                  It's very typical to have a retainer / insurance to bring in "emergency" incident responders beyond your existing team. Not saying that's the case here but it wouldn't be surprising.

                                                                                                                                • eieiyo 10 hours ago
                                                                                                                                  • james-clef 8 hours ago

                                                                                                                                    The point I am taking away here is to never use Vercel's environment variables to store secrets.

                                                                                                                                    • gneray 14 hours ago
                                                                                                                                      • rubiquity 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                        He doesn't work at Vercel but he is the type to never pass up any opportunity to chase clout.

                                                                                                                                        • dankwizard 3 hours ago

                                                                                                                                          He is affiliated with Vercel though

                                                                                                                                          • threecheese 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                            Almost like that’s his job.

                                                                                                                                            Hey, I’m with you - I think social media needs to die specifically for this reason. I’m reminded of the term “snake oil” - it’s like the dawn of newspapers again.

                                                                                                                                            • TiredOfLife 10 hours ago

                                                                                                                                              Media as a whole needs to die

                                                                                                                                              • hoppyhoppy2 5 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                Including books and the internet?

                                                                                                                                        • ofabioroma 14 hours ago

                                                                                                                                          Time to ipo

                                                                                                                                          • _puk 11 hours ago

                                                                                                                                            Hmmm, the dashboard 404 I got 6 hours ago now makes a bit more sense..

                                                                                                                                            • 0xy 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                              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...

                                                                                                                                              • embedding-shape 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                > 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.

                                                                                                                                                Wasn't unheard of back in the day, that you leaked things via PHP templates, like serializing and adding the whole user object including private details in a Twig template or whatever, it just happened the other way around kind of. This was before "fat frontend, thin backend" was the prevalent architecture, many built their "frontends" from templates with just sprinkles of JavaScript back then.

                                                                                                                                                • sbarre 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                  People say "Next.js is the new PHP" because it's the most popular and prominent tooling out there, and so by sheer number of available targets it's the one that comes up the most when things go wrong like this.

                                                                                                                                                  But there are more people trying to secure this framework and the underlying tools than there would be on some obscure framework or something the average company built themselves.

                                                                                                                                                  Also "pay a real provider", what does that mean? Are you again implying that the average company should be responsible for _more_ of their own security in their hosting stack, not less?

                                                                                                                                                  Most companies have _zero_ security engineers.. Using a vertically-integrated hosting company like Vercel (or other similar companies, perhaps with different tech stacks - this opinion has nothing to do with Next or Node) is very likely their best and most secure option based on what they are able to invest in that area.

                                                                                                                                                  • bakugo 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                    Next.js is the polar opposite of PHP, in a way.

                                                                                                                                                    PHP was so simple and easy to understand that anyone with a text editor and some cheap shared hosting could pick it up, but also low level enough that almost nothing was magically done for you. The result was many inexperienced developers making really basic mistakes while implementing essential features that we now take for granted.

                                                                                                                                                    Frameworks like Next.js take the complete opposite approach, they are insanely complex but hide that complexity behind layers and layers of magic, actively discouraging developers from looking behind the curtain, and the result is that even experienced developers end up shooting themselves in the foot by using the magical incantations wrong.

                                                                                                                                                    • qudat 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                      Totally agree. Nextjs is a vehicle to sell their PaaS, every other feature is a coincidence.

                                                                                                                                                      What’s worse is vercel corrupted the react devs and convinced them that RSC was a good idea. It’s not like react was strictly in good hands at Facebook but at least the team there were good shepherds and trying to foster the ecosystem.

                                                                                                                                                  • jamesfisher 9 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                    Reminder the Vercel CEO is a genocide supporter, if you need more reasons to move away from it.

                                                                                                                                                  • nothinkjustai 11 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                    Looks like their rampant vibe coding is starting to catch up to them. Expect to see many pre vulns like this in the future.

                                                                                                                                                    • jimmydoe 10 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                      what's the cause of the breach?

                                                                                                                                                      • raw_anon_1111 9 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                        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.

                                                                                                                                                        • eddythompson80 8 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                          Is AWS security boundary the AWS account? Are you expecting Vercel to provision and manage an AWS account per user? That doesn’t make any sense man, though makes sense if you’re a former AWS employee.

                                                                                                                                                          • raw_anon_1111 8 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                            Yes the security boundary is the AWS account.

                                                                                                                                                            It doesn’t make sense for a random employee who mistakenly uses a third party app to compromise all of its users it’s a poor security architecture.

                                                                                                                                                            It’s about as insecure as having one Apache Server serving multiple customer’s accounts. No one who is concerned about security should ever use Vercel.

                                                                                                                                                            • eddythompson80 2 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                              > It’s about as insecure as having one Apache Server serving multiple customer’s accounts.

                                                                                                                                                              You really have no clue what you’re talking about don’t you? Were you a sales guy at AWS or something?

                                                                                                                                                              • otterley 44 minutes ago

                                                                                                                                                                Hey, knock it off. If you disagree with someone, present a substantive counterargument.

                                                                                                                                                                • raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                  Well, I know that you have never heard of someone using a third party SaaS product at any major cloud provider compromising all of their customers accounts.

                                                                                                                                                                  Are you really defending Vercel as a hosting platform that anyone should take seriously?

                                                                                                                                                          • tamimio 3 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                            Another win for self-hosters, I host my own vercel (coolify) and it works well, all under my control and only expose what I want.

                                                                                                                                                            • rvz 14 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                              There is no serious reason to use Vercel, other than for those being locked into the NextJs ecosystem and demo projects.

                                                                                                                                                              • allthetime 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                I recently got hit by a car on my bike. While I was starting the claim filing process the web portal for ICBC (British Columbia insurance) was acting a little funky / stalling / and then gave me a weird access error. Down at the bottom of the error page was a little grey underlined link that said “vercel”.

                                                                                                                                                                I’m not exactly surprised, but it seems like the unserious, ill-informed and lazy are taking over. There is absolutely zero reason why a large, essential public service should be overspending and running on an unnecessary managed service like vercel… yet, here we are.

                                                                                                                                                              • mikert89 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                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

                                                                                                                                                                • sph 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                  Your entire recent posting history is "software engineering is over, AI has won."

                                                                                                                                                                  What's your agenda here?

                                                                                                                                                                  • nothinkjustai 11 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                    The guy has like 10 thousand comments boosting AI and 600 karma, whatever his agenda is people aren’t buying it.

                                                                                                                                                                    • mikert89 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                      how many recent security breaches have we seen?

                                                                                                                                                                      • hansmayer 8 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                        Most of recent issues, including this incident, happened not due to smart superintelligent "agents" taking over the world - chatbots and other text generators are about as intelligent amd powerful as a dead starfish - but due to the combined stupidity of the said chatbots amd lazy idiots who use them to hide their own incompetence and thus produce such embarassing mistakes. A few years ago, they would be fired for exposing secrets in plain text, but since their manager wanted an AI-Workflow...

                                                                                                                                                                        • nozzlegear 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                          How many can unequivocally be attributed to malicious AI?

                                                                                                                                                                        • bossyTeacher 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                          Paid by a Sama minion, I bet.

                                                                                                                                                                        • Bridged7756 10 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                          LOL. Attackers will run these agents but the thousands of maintainers will be so dumb to sit idly and get hammered with exploits. I wonder what the ratio of attackers to maintainers must be, 1:1000 is a fair assessment i take it.

                                                                                                                                                                          Also LLMs will be used to attack only, no one will be smart to integrate it into CI flows, because everyone is that dumb. No security tools will pop up.

                                                                                                                                                                          • goalieca 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                            Slop coding and makeshift sites being thrown up with abandon at breakneck speeds is going to buy me a lot of minivans.

                                                                                                                                                                            • tcp_handshaker 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                              >> ai is going to lead to mass security breaches.

                                                                                                                                                                              Let that be the end of Microsoft. Was forced to use their shitty products for years, by corporate inertia and their free Teams and Azure licenses, first-dose-is-free, curse.

                                                                                                                                                                              • lijok 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                                ShinyHunters are a phishing group. What does this have to do with AI agents?

                                                                                                                                                                                • mikert89 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                                  Run ai agents around the clock to do hyper targeted fishing

                                                                                                                                                                                  • cj 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                                    I feel like humans would be better at hyper targeting.

                                                                                                                                                                                    AI agents have the benefit of working at scale, probably "better" used for mass targeting.

                                                                                                                                                                                    • mikert89 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                                      this like is saying email marketing is done better if you hand write every email. Thats true, but the hit rate is so low, that you are better off generating 1 million hyper personalized emails and firing them off into the ether

                                                                                                                                                                                      • mcmcmc 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                                        As someone who did the former for a couple years, “better off” is subjective and dependent on your business model, particularly for B2B. It’s a trade off like anything else. You may get more leads, but they may convert at a lower rate. Sending at that scale also increases your risk of email deliverability problems. Trashing your domain has more impacts than you’d think. In smaller, targeted markets it even can damage your business reputation and hurt future sales if done poorly; word gets around.

                                                                                                                                                                                        • cj 12 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                                          If you’re targeting a million people, I wouldn’t consider that a hyper targeted attack.

                                                                                                                                                                                          But I get your point.

                                                                                                                                                                                        • freedomben 13 hours ago

                                                                                                                                                                                          I disagree. Many humans are phishing in a different language than their native tongue, and LLMs are way better at sounding legit/professional than many of them. The best spear-phishing will still be humans, but AI definitely raises the bar.