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Where is this guy sitting that he is able to collect all of this data? And why is he able to release it all in a blog post? (my company wouldn't allow me to col

Where is this guy sitting that he is able to collect all of this data? And why is he able to release it all in a blog post? (my company wouldn't allow me to collect and release customer data like this.)

jmogly 11mo ago
Im also wondering how he is able to see calls to AI providers directly in the browser, client side api calls? Thats strange to me. Also how is he able to peer into the rag architectures? I don’t get that, maybe GpT4.1 allows unauthenticated requests? Is there an OAuth setup that allows client side requests to OpenAI?
- muppetman 11mo ago
  Yea I just posted a similar comment. I'm sure some websites just skin OpenAI/Claude etc, but ALL of them? It makes no sense.
InsideOutSanta 11mo ago
It sounds like some of these companies call the OpenAI or Anthropic APIs directly from their frontend. Later, the author also mentions "response time patterns for every major AI API," so maybe there's some information about the backend leaking that way even if the API calls are bridged. But I'd like to know an actual answer to this, too, especially since large parts of this post read as if they were written by an LLM.
- cess11 11mo ago
  "I found 12 companies that left API keys in their frontend code. I reported them all. None responded." They claim to have found that.
- hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
  > It sounds like some of these companies call the OpenAI or Anthropic APIs directly from their frontend. Which would be a major security hole. And sure, lots of startups have major security holes, but not enough that he could come up with these BS statistics. I'm a little dismayed at how high up this has been voted given the data is guaranteed to be made up.
  - kllrnohj 11mo ago
    > > It sounds like some of these companies call the OpenAI or Anthropic APIs directly from their frontend. > Which would be a major security hole. An officially supported security hole https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/realtime-sessions https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/realtime-sess...
    - rs186 11mo ago
      Realtime API is a very small use case that most products don't touch.
teiferer 11mo ago
Another red flag with the article is that the author's LinkedIn profile link at the bottom leads to a non-existing page. Is Teja Kusireddy a real person? Or is this maybe just an experiment from some AI company (or other actor) to see how far they can push it? A Google search by that name doesn't find anything not related to the article. The article should be flagged. Otoh, this should get discussed.
- zkmon 11mo ago
  He seems real. Goes by Teja K. Seems a startup founder.
  - hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
    He may be real, but the article is fake BS. There is simply no way he'd be in a position to intercept the calls, and he never explains it.
    - less_penguiny 11mo ago
      There is nothing difficult about monitoring network traffic in this way for desktop or native apps.
      - teiferer 11mo ago
        Did you read the article? It claims to have knowledge of network traffic between the startup's devices and the AI providers' devices.
      - hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
        So? The vast majority of these startups would still do the wrapping on their own backend.
  - teiferer 11mo ago
    Do you have any link that supports this?
hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
Yeah, TBH my BS detector is going off because this article never explains how he is able to intercept these calls. To be able to call the OpenAI directly from the front end, you'd need to include the OpenAI key, which would be a huge security hole. I don't doubt that many of these companies are just wrappers around the big LLM providers, but they'd be calling the APIs from their backend where nothing should be interceptable. And sure, I believe a few of them are dumb enough to call OpenAI from the frontend, but that would be a minority. This whole thing smells fishy, and I call BS unless the author provides more details about how he intercepted the calls.
- chmod775 11mo ago
  > Yeah, TBH my BS detector is going off because this article never explains how he is able to intercept these calls. You mean, except for explaining what he's doing 4-5 times? He was literally repeating himself restating it. Half the article is about the various indicators he used. THERE'S EXAMPLES OF THEM. There's this bit: > Monitored their network traffic for 60-second sessions > Decompiled and analyzed their JavaScript bundles Also there's this whole explanation: > The giveaways when I monitored outbound traffic: > Requests to api.openai.com every time a user interacted with their "AI" > Request headers containing OpenAI-Organization identifiers > Response times matching OpenAI’s API latency patterns (150–400ms for most queries) > Token usage patterns identical to GPT-4’s pricing tiers > Characteristic exponential backoff on rate limits (OpenAI’s signature pattern) Also there's these bits: > The Methodology (Free on GitHub next week): > - The complete scraping infrastructure > - API fingerprinting techniques > - Response time patterns for every major AI AP One time he even repeats himself by stating what he's doing as playwright pseudocode, in case plain English isn't enough. This was also really funny: > One company’s “revolutionary natural language understanding engine” was literally this: [clientside code with prompt + direct openai API call]. And there's also this bit at the end of the article: > The truth is just an F12 away. There's more because LITERALLY HALF THE ARTICLE IS HIM DOING THE THING YOU COMPLAIN HE DIDN'T DO. In case it's still not clear, he was capturing local traffic while automating with playwright as well as analyzing clientside JS.
  - teiferer 11mo ago
cess11 11mo ago
There's a link in the preview of TFA that unlocks the rest of the article, looks like this for me: https://medium.com/@teja.kusireddy23/i-reverse-engineered-200-ai-startups-73-are-lying-a8610acab0d3?sk=60b6f04b464b86af5cabd49270bd1bcb https://medium.com/@teja.kusireddy23/i-reverse-engineered-20... The article is basically a description of where to look for clues. Perhaps they've contracted with some of these companies and don't want to break some NDA by naming them, but still know a lot about how they work.
- hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
  > Perhaps they've contracted with some of these companies and don't want to break some NDA by naming them, but still know a lot about how they work. This makes literally no sense. Why would any companies (let alone most of them) contract with this guy who seems hell bent on exposing them all. The article is simple made up, most likely by an LLM.

jmogly 11mo ago

Im also wondering how he is able to see calls to AI providers directly in the browser, client side api calls? Thats strange to me. Also how is he able to peer into the rag architectures? I don’t get that, maybe GpT4.1 allows unauthenticated requests? Is there an OAuth setup that allows client side requests to OpenAI?

muppetman 11mo ago
Yea I just posted a similar comment. I'm sure some websites just skin OpenAI/Claude etc, but ALL of them? It makes no sense.

InsideOutSanta 11mo ago

It sounds like some of these companies call the OpenAI or Anthropic APIs directly from their frontend. Later, the author also mentions "response time patterns for every major AI API," so maybe there's some information about the backend leaking that way even if the API calls are bridged. But I'd like to know an actual answer to this, too, especially since large parts of this post read as if they were written by an LLM.

cess11 11mo ago
"I found 12 companies that left API keys in their frontend code. I reported them all. None responded." They claim to have found that.
hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
> It sounds like some of these companies call the OpenAI or Anthropic APIs directly from their frontend. Which would be a major security hole. And sure, lots of startups have major security holes, but not enough that he could come up with these BS statistics. I'm a little dismayed at how high up this has been voted given the data is guaranteed to be made up.
- kllrnohj 11mo ago
  > > It sounds like some of these companies call the OpenAI or Anthropic APIs directly from their frontend. > Which would be a major security hole. An officially supported security hole https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/realtime-sessions https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/realtime-sess...
  - rs186 11mo ago
    Realtime API is a very small use case that most products don't touch.

teiferer 11mo ago

Another red flag with the article is that the author's LinkedIn profile link at the bottom leads to a non-existing page. Is Teja Kusireddy a real person? Or is this maybe just an experiment from some AI company (or other actor) to see how far they can push it? A Google search by that name doesn't find anything not related to the article. The article should be flagged. Otoh, this should get discussed.

zkmon 11mo ago
He seems real. Goes by Teja K. Seems a startup founder.
- hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
  He may be real, but the article is fake BS. There is simply no way he'd be in a position to intercept the calls, and he never explains it.
  - less_penguiny 11mo ago
    There is nothing difficult about monitoring network traffic in this way for desktop or native apps.
    - teiferer 11mo ago
      Did you read the article? It claims to have knowledge of network traffic between the startup's devices and the AI providers' devices.
    - hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
      So? The vast majority of these startups would still do the wrapping on their own backend.
- teiferer 11mo ago
  Do you have any link that supports this?

hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago

Yeah, TBH my BS detector is going off because this article never explains how he is able to intercept these calls. To be able to call the OpenAI directly from the front end, you'd need to include the OpenAI key, which would be a huge security hole. I don't doubt that many of these companies are just wrappers around the big LLM providers, but they'd be calling the APIs from their backend where nothing should be interceptable. And sure, I believe a few of them are dumb enough to call OpenAI from the frontend, but that would be a minority. This whole thing smells fishy, and I call BS unless the author provides more details about how he intercepted the calls.

chmod775 11mo ago
> Yeah, TBH my BS detector is going off because this article never explains how he is able to intercept these calls. You mean, except for explaining what he's doing 4-5 times? He was literally repeating himself restating it. Half the article is about the various indicators he used. THERE'S EXAMPLES OF THEM. There's this bit: > Monitored their network traffic for 60-second sessions > Decompiled and analyzed their JavaScript bundles Also there's this whole explanation: > The giveaways when I monitored outbound traffic: > Requests to api.openai.com every time a user interacted with their "AI" > Request headers containing OpenAI-Organization identifiers > Response times matching OpenAI’s API latency patterns (150–400ms for most queries) > Token usage patterns identical to GPT-4’s pricing tiers > Characteristic exponential backoff on rate limits (OpenAI’s signature pattern) Also there's these bits: > The Methodology (Free on GitHub next week): > - The complete scraping infrastructure > - API fingerprinting techniques > - Response time patterns for every major AI AP One time he even repeats himself by stating what he's doing as playwright pseudocode, in case plain English isn't enough. This was also really funny: > One company’s “revolutionary natural language understanding engine” was literally this: [clientside code with prompt + direct openai API call]. And there's also this bit at the end of the article: > The truth is just an F12 away. There's more because LITERALLY HALF THE ARTICLE IS HIM DOING THE THING YOU COMPLAIN HE DIDN'T DO. In case it's still not clear, he was capturing local traffic while automating with playwright as well as analyzing clientside JS.
- teiferer 11mo ago

cess11 11mo ago

There's a link in the preview of TFA that unlocks the rest of the article, looks like this for me: https://medium.com/@teja.kusireddy23/i-reverse-engineered-200-ai-startups-73-are-lying-a8610acab0d3?sk=60b6f04b464b86af5cabd49270bd1bcb https://medium.com/@teja.kusireddy23/i-reverse-engineered-20... The article is basically a description of where to look for clues. Perhaps they've contracted with some of these companies and don't want to break some NDA by naming them, but still know a lot about how they work.

hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
> Perhaps they've contracted with some of these companies and don't want to break some NDA by naming them, but still know a lot about how they work. This makes literally no sense. Why would any companies (let alone most of them) contract with this guy who seems hell bent on exposing them all. The article is simple made up, most likely by an LLM.