What Really Happened in the Tea App Data Breach (And Why Principles Matter)

In July 2025, the Tea app suffered two major data breaches — and both were preventable with basic engineering practices. Let’s break it down technically.

🧱 Tea App: Likely Architecture

Tea is a social-feedback app. Its backend likely had:

• A mobile frontend using React Native or Swift/Kotlin
• A REST API gateway (Node.js, Python, or Firebase Functions)
• Firebase for authentication and user management
• Firebase Cloud Storage for images and ID uploads
• A NoSQL database (Firestore or similar) for messages and posts

Here’s the catch: Firebase allows direct access to storage and database, bypassing your API if you don’t lock things down explicitly.

🔐 Breach #1 — Exposed Image & ID Data (72,000 files)

How Firebase Works (and Where It Went Wrong)

Firebase Storage lets mobile apps upload/view files directly using SDKs or URLs. It uses Firebase Security Rules (not your backend APIs) to enforce access control.

But if:

• You allow public read access in rules (or forget to update them),
• Or store files in a bucket with default “open” config,
• And skip backend validation…

Then users — or attackers — can access images just by knowing the link. That’s what happened. A legacy bucket storing verification images was left public.

• Storage: Firebase bucket from an older version of the app.
• Issue: Public read access. No token, no check.
• Impact: 13,000 selfies/IDs + 59,000 post/comment images leaked.
• Cause: The bucket was never secured or migrated during infrastructure updates.

💬 Breach #2 — Leaked Direct Messages (1.1+ million messages)

• Service: API or database storing user DMs.
• Issue: No authentication required on endpoints.
• Impact: Messages included sensitive content.
• Cause: A debug or legacy endpoint lacked proper auth. Even push notifications were exploited.

🧠 The Real Lesson

These weren’t zero-day attacks. Just:

• Misconfigured cloud services (Firebase Storage, public endpoints)
• Legacy systems not cleaned up
• Missing API/auth enforcement at critical layers

Whether you “vibe code” with AI or not doesn’t matter if you skip the fundamentals. Secure architecture, proper auth, and data lifecycle awareness are the real backbone.

SoftwareEngineering #Security #DataBreach #BestPractices #Firebase #TeaApp