Hackers stole AI account keys from a hosting company's customers

Northflank, a cloud hosting company, told customers on October 30 to assume that every secret they stored on its platform was stolen. Several customers have since reported that someone used their AI account keys without permission. Those keys work like passwords, and whoever holds one can run AI services on the owner's tab.

What happened

Northflank lets developers run apps, databases and AI tools without managing their own servers. Many store sensitive details in what are called environment variables. These are private settings an app reads when it runs, such as database passwords, access tokens and AI keys.

Cloud security firm Wiz alerted Northflank to the breach. The company says its engineers looked at the alert one minute later and rolled out a series of fixes that day. It then told customers to assume the settings had been decrypted, meaning unlocked and readable by the attackers, and to disable or replace every key.

Why it matters

A stolen AI key can be expensive. Wiz calls the practice LLMJacking: criminals use another organization's key to run AI models, or sell that access to others. The owner gets the bill. In two cases Wiz investigated, stolen business credentials were used for about 2.5 million calls to Amazon's Bedrock AI service. That added up to roughly $100,000 in usage.

Northflank is not alone. Wiz counted at least nine attacks on AI developer platforms in October, including Railway, OpenCode, Warp and Lightning AI. Wiz has not confirmed that one group is behind all of them. Many involved attempts to steal AI keys.

Who it affects

The warning is aimed at Northflank customers, mostly developers and businesses that keep AI keys, database passwords and tokens there. If you pay a developer or agency to build your app, ask whether it runs on Northflank. If it does, make sure the keys have been replaced.

If you have never used Northflank, this notice is not about you. The material does not say that everyday users of AI chat apps are affected.

What is still unknown

• How the attackers got into Northflank's systems.
• How many customers were affected.
• Whether credentials other than AI keys were stolen or misused.

BleepingComputer asked Northflank these questions and had not received a response when it published.

What to do

The alert box above lists the steps. The short version: replace your keys, check your AI provider's usage and billing records, and report anything odd. Northflank has also turned on audit logs for all customers, including free accounts, which can help show what happened. It added key rotation for PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL and Redis databases too.

What happens next

Watch for Northflank to share how the breach happened and how many customers it touched. Wiz also found services that resell access to AI models, but it could not tie them to these breaches. Until more is known, treat any key that sat on the platform as exposed.