Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable
by morpheuskafka on 4/14/2026, 6:56:40 PM
Fiverr (gig work/task platform, competitor to Upwork) uses a service called Cloudinary to process PDF/images in messaging, including work products from the worker to client.<p>Besides the PDF processing value add, Cloudinary effectively acts like S3 here, serving assets directly to the web client. Like S3, it has support for signed/expiring URLs. However, Fiverr opted to use public URLs, not signed ones, for sensitive client-worker communication.<p>Moreover, it seems like they may be serving public HTML somewhere that links to these files. As a result, hundreds are in Google search results, many containing PII.<p>Example query: site:fiverr-res.cloudinary.com form 1040<p>In fact, Fiverr actively buys Google Ads for keywords like "form 1234 filing" despite knowing that it does not adequately secure the resulting work product, causing the preparer to violate the GLBA/FTC Safeguards Rule.<p>Responsible Disclosure Note -- 40 days have passed since this was notified to the designated vulnerability email (security@fiverr.com). The security team did not reply. Therefore, this is being made public as it doesn't seem eligible for CVE/CERT processing as it is not really a code vulnerability, and I don't know anyone else who would care about it.
Comments
by: HeliumHydride
It seems that someone sent a DMCA complaint months ago relating to this: <a href="https://lumendatabase.org/notices/53130362" rel="nofollow">https://lumendatabase.org/notices/53130362</a>
4/14/2026, 10:39:14 PM
by: applfanboysbgon
Software development jobs are too accessible. Jobs with access to/control over millions of people's data should require some kind of genuine software engineering certification, and there should be business-cratering fines for something as egregious as completely ignoring security reports. It is ridiculous how we've completely normalised leaks like this on a weekly or almost-daily basis.
4/14/2026, 10:22:56 PM
by: qingcharles
That's wild. Thousands of SSNs in there. Also a lot of Fiverr folks selling digital products and all their PDF courses are being returned for free in the search results.
4/14/2026, 10:07:33 PM
by: mtmail
You followed the correct reporting instructions.<p><a href="https://www.fiverr.com/.well-known/security.txt" rel="nofollow">https://www.fiverr.com/.well-known/security.txt</a> only has "Contact: security@fiverr.com" and in their help pages they say "Fiverr operates a Bug Bounty program in collaboration with BugCrowd. If you discover a vulnerability, please reach out to security@fiverr.com to receive information about how to participate in our program."
4/14/2026, 7:15:11 PM
by: tfsh
Hopefully this can be patched soon.<p>Their robots file specifically has the code to disallow search engine crawling commented out - <a href="https://fiverr-res.cloudinary.com/robots.txt" rel="nofollow">https://fiverr-res.cloudinary.com/robots.txt</a>.<p>---<p><pre><code> See http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html for documentation on how to use the robots.txt file # # To ban all spiders from the entire site uncomment the next two lines: # User-Agent: \* # Disallow: /</code></pre>
4/14/2026, 10:22:11 PM
by: janoelze
really bad stuff in the results. very easy to find API tokens, penetration test reports, confidental PDFs, internal APIs. Fiverr needs to immediately block all static asset access until this is resolved. business continuity should not be a concern here.
4/14/2026, 10:02:26 PM
by: wxw
Wow, surprised this isn't blowing up more. Leaking form 1040s is egregious, let alone getting them indexed by Google...
4/14/2026, 7:28:01 PM
by: johnmlussier
Probably not in scope but maybe <a href="https://bugcrowd.com/engagements/cloudinary" rel="nofollow">https://bugcrowd.com/engagements/cloudinary</a> will care?<p>This is bad.
4/14/2026, 9:44:33 PM
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4/14/2026, 10:12:56 PM
by: impish9208
This is crazy! So many tax and other financial forms out in the open. But the most interesting file I’ve seen so far seems to be a book draft titled “HOOD NIGGA AFFIRMATIONS: A Collection of Affirming Anecdotes for Hood Niggas Everywhere”. I made it to page 27 out of 63.
4/14/2026, 9:29:44 PM
by: mraza007
Woah that's brutal all the important information is wild in public
4/14/2026, 8:00:28 PM
by: sergiotapia
This is really bad, just straight up people's income, SSN and worse just right there in the search results on Brave Search even.
4/14/2026, 10:24:09 PM
by: yieldcrv
this is a bad leak, appreciate the attempts at disclosure before this
4/14/2026, 10:20:35 PM
by: smashah
They bought and.co and then dropped it. strange company
4/14/2026, 9:15:12 PM
by: popalchemist
Burn it to the ground.
4/14/2026, 9:06:36 PM
by: BoredPositron
Just by scrolling over it that's really rough.
4/14/2026, 8:58:31 PM
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4/14/2026, 7:48:43 PM
by: iwontberude
Loooool what a mess
4/14/2026, 9:19:22 PM
by: walletdrainer
> Moreover, it seems like they may be serving public HTML somewhere that links to these files. As a result, hundreds are in Google search results, many containing PII<p>This is not how Google works.
4/14/2026, 10:13:16 PM