Fireworks AI's second breach in two months exposes Notion users' chat data

Fireworks AI, a platform developers use to run open artificial intelligence models, has confirmed that a cyberattack exposed some customer data, the company said in a security advisory described by TechCrunch. The breach is the second to hit Fireworks in two months, following an earlier incident in October, according to TechCrunch’s report.

Fireworks said an attacker broke into its cloud provider and from there reached one of Fireworks’ development systems, TechCrunch reports. That access let the hackers reach data belonging to some of Fireworks’ customers, including billing information and certain datasets, per the company’s advisory. Fireworks serves tens of thousands of customers worldwide, among them legal technology firm Harvey and AI coding company Cursor, TechCrunch reports.

Notion, the online document and note-taking company, is one confirmed affected customer. Notion said Fireworks first alerted it to a security incident and later confirmed that hackers had stolen some of Notion’s customer data, according to Notion’s disclosure cited by TechCrunch. The company said the breach touched about 1% of its own customer base. On November 3, Notion disconnected its systems from Fireworks, deleted the data it had stored there, and cut all connectivity between the two companies, TechCrunch reports.

This week, Notion confirmed that the stolen data included chat transcripts from customers who used the “Insights” feature inside Notion AI. Notion said the transcripts contain “any input to or output from the model that was written to the chat,” according to the company’s statement reported by TechCrunch. Notion added that much of the stolen material could not be traced back to specific customers.

Fireworks told TechCrunch it believes the attackers are financially motivated and are likely trying to sell access to large language models rather than use the data directly. Such schemes let outside buyers run AI workloads on stolen access without paying for their own computing resources, TechCrunch reports.

What this means

The incident shows how a breach at one infrastructure provider can spread to companies that never dealt directly with the attacker. Notion builds AI features on top of Fireworks’ systems, so a break-in there became a data exposure for Notion’s own customers, even though Notion itself was not the point of entry.

What remains unclear from the available reporting is how many other Fireworks customers beyond Notion have had data stolen, and what exactly the October breach that preceded this one exposed. TechCrunch’s report does not say whether the same attacker or method was used both times.

Fireworks has not detailed what, if anything, has changed in its security practices since the October breach, and TechCrunch’s report does not say whether other affected customers have come forward.