Meta pauses Muse chat sharing after researchers find links in DNS records

Meta has paused a feature for sharing conversations with its Muse AI assistant after security researchers found that public DNS records could reveal links to shared chats. The company said on October 20 that it was reviewing the findings and considering changes to how the links can be discovered.

Muse spokesperson Tracy Clayton told The Verge that sharing a specific Muse artifact creates a page accessible to anyone with its link. ‘We’ve paused this functionality while we review this report and consider changes to how these links can be discovered,’ Clayton said.

How Claroc found the Muse links

According to Claroc, Muse put a user’s share title into the web address alongside a random ID. When a browser resolved the hostname, a passive-DNS provider observing the lookup could retain a searchable record. The title could make a shared conversation identifiable even to someone who had never received its link. Claroc says its discovery did not involve a search engine; a robots.txt instruction to crawlers does not prevent someone from opening a page.

The Verge reported that conversations Claroc viewed included a marketing company’s revenue review, a small business owner’s loan application, a workplace staff calendar and notes for a job candidate’s call with an AI lab. Claroc says the pages it examined existed because users had asked Muse to share their conversations. The issue was how those shares could be found beyond the intended recipients.

What Claroc’s October 20 recheck found

Claroc says it revisited 40 shares on October 20 that had opened without an account earlier in the month. None opened during that recheck, and the hostnames serving their content returned errors. The firm says the hostnames, including their titles, remained in passive-DNS history. That check establishes what happened to the sampled links, rather than the status of every Muse share.

Claroc said Meta told Ars Technica it was suspending the feature after Ars asked about the research. Meta’s statement to The Verge describes the pause as part of a review and does not give a date for restoring sharing or specify what changes it may make. Claroc dates Muse’s launch to September 8, leaving a little over a month between launch and its initial search of passive-DNS records.