Making Tech Headlines · Page 3

Applebee's Gives Its Database Password a Table in the App

October 31, 2026 at 6:01 AM EDT · New York time

Applebee's exposed customers' personal data by leaving a database password in its app, TechCrunch reported. A security researcher found the hardcoded credential, which allowed unrestricted access to customer information. The problem was not a password carefully hidden behind a difficult login. It was a credential placed inside software distributed to users. An app can be examined, so a secret embedded in it is not protected merely because it is out of sight during an ordinary order. For customers, the attraction of a restaurant app is supposed to be convenience. The information involved is personal data, not an extra side dish that diners knowingly ordered for public inspection. The report highlights the gap between an easy customer experience and the security work needed behind it. Hardcoded credentials also make an uncomfortable product feature: they can give anyone who finds them the same access the app was meant to have. That is a generous interpretation of hospitality, but a poor way to handle a database. Applebee's may be in the business of inviting people in, yet a customer database needs a more selective host. The app made the entrance convenient enough that the password itself was already waiting inside.

Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.