Online file storage and sharing service Box has patched the Mac version of its desktop app after a developer found it exposed potentially sensitive bits of data, including API keys, internal user IDs, URLs and passwords.
Mac users should ensure they’re on the updated 4.0.6035 version, wrote Pepijn Bruienne, a Mac development and operation specialist senior at the University of Michigan, who found the problem.
The error was probably an unintentional one by Box, Bruienne wrote in a blog post. He reported the issue to the company in early January. Box told him on Friday that it had released an updated version.
Box Sync is the desktop version of the popular application used for synching and sharing files across devices. Bruienne dove into Box Sync’s code to look for a better way to do a large-scale deployment.
“If you are a Mac Admin in charge of even a small deployment environment you probably know how tedious it is to deploy the Box Sync application and manage its settings,” Bruienne wrote.
In the course of that work, he came across what appeared to be sensitive files in a module labeled “conf,” which contained key and value pairs, he added.
The danger is that the data leak could potentially give a hacker enough information to launch an attack against Box.
Bruienne wrote he didn’t take it that far. “To be clear, I did not try to use any of the information I found to gain access to any Box systems,” he wrote.