Sensitive enterprise Notion account data was stolen from Fireworks's systems during a recent hack. Notion is trying to put all the blame onto Fireworks. However, that data shouldn't have been persisted in any Fireworks systems in the first place.
Notion promised enterprise users that they would always use zero-data-retention for external AI vendors, unless an account admin opted into data retention. However, Notion built a feature (called "Insights") on top of a Fireworks endpoint (the Batch Inference API) that could not have supported ZDR by its nature. Then, they default opted-in many enterprise customers. Then... really bad luck... Fireworks got hacked, and that user data got exposed.
[One of the Fireworks cofounders](https://x.com/dzhulgakov/status/2120888103602708631?a=OtICW-...) posted on Twitter/X claiming that Fireworks was storing Notion's user data because Notion chose to use the Fireworks Batch Inference API, and that that API is clearly documented as "not compatible with zero data retention."
It should also be obvious to any engineer that a batch API is not zero data retention. The way a batch API works is, you send a bunch of data to the provider, they store that data and they slowly process it, and when they’re done they send it back to you. Note that they have to store the data here!
(This is a scoop / original investigation. Notion has not acknowledged this failure in any communications, and it hasn't previously been reported on. Obviously pretty niche but I had fun digging into it!)
Sensitive enterprise Notion account data was stolen from Fireworks's systems during a recent hack. Notion is trying to put all the blame onto Fireworks. However, that data shouldn't have been persisted in any Fireworks systems in the first place.
Notion promised enterprise users that they would always use zero-data-retention for external AI vendors, unless an account admin opted into data retention. However, Notion built a feature (called "Insights") on top of a Fireworks endpoint (the Batch Inference API) that could not have supported ZDR by its nature. Then, they default opted-in many enterprise customers. Then... really bad luck... Fireworks got hacked, and that user data got exposed.
[One of the Fireworks cofounders](https://x.com/dzhulgakov/status/2120888103602708631?a=OtICW-...) posted on Twitter/X claiming that Fireworks was storing Notion's user data because Notion chose to use the Fireworks Batch Inference API, and that that API is clearly documented as "not compatible with zero data retention."
It should also be obvious to any engineer that a batch API is not zero data retention. The way a batch API works is, you send a bunch of data to the provider, they store that data and they slowly process it, and when they’re done they send it back to you. Note that they have to store the data here!
(This is a scoop / original investigation. Notion has not acknowledged this failure in any communications, and it hasn't previously been reported on. Obviously pretty niche but I had fun digging into it!)