In late June 2025, security researchers discovered that McDonald’s AI-powered hiring platform, McHire, had a critical security flaw. A default admin password of '123456' allowed access to a live dashboard containing sensitive data of nearly 64 million job applicants. The researchers also found an insecure direct object reference vulnerability that could expose full applicant profiles and chat logs. McDonald’s and the platform’s vendor, Paradox.ai, quickly fixed the issues and stated that only five records were viewed by the researchers, with no public data leak.