
McDonald’s AI Hiring Bot Exposed Millions of Applicants' Data to Hackers Using the Password ‘123456’
Andy Greenberg
created: July 9, 2025, 7:28 p.m. | updated: July 11, 2025, 12:23 p.m.
If you want a job at McDonald’s today, there’s a good chance you'll have to talk to Olivia.
Until last week, the platform that runs the Olivia chatbot, built by artificial intelligence software firm Paradox.ai, also suffered from absurdly basic security flaws.
The data appears to include as many as 64 million records, including applicants' names, email addresses, and phone numbers.
“We own this.”In its own statement to WIRED, McDonald’s agreed that Paradox.ai was to blame.
“We take our commitment to cyber security seriously and will continue to hold our third-party providers accountable to meeting our standards of data protection.”
2 weeks, 3 days ago: WIRED