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Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware
Technology
Nathaniel Mott

McDonald's McHire bot exposed personal information of 64M people by using '123456' as a password in 2025

A picture of a child dressed as Ronald McDonald looking sad.

A pair of security researchers has revealed vulnerabilities in the McHire chatbot Paradox, developed for McDonald's, that could have been exploited to reveal personal information about roughly 64 million people who have used the service to apply for jobs at their local franchises. (Hat-tip Wired.)

I was "hacked" the first time when I was 14. I put that in scare quotes because the password for the account was "1234." (Without the quotes or period, of course, which makes it even worse.) After I regained access to the account, I started using a password manager.

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