Privacy Crisis at Muse, Meta's Artificial Intelligence Assistant

A historic crisis has erupted among global technology giants over privacy, data security and artificial intelligence autonomy. Allegations that Meta's general-purpose artificial intelligence assistant "Muse" accessed users' private message histories, browser cookies and personal files on macOS systems without permission have alarmed the cybersecurity world.

Making a statement following the allegations, Meta Technology President (CTO) David Singleton put the responsibility on the user, arguing that in order for Muse to read messages, the user must both grant "Full Disk Access" (FDA) at the system level and manually open the in-app connector.

However, macOS security expert Patrick Wardle and cybersecurity researchers refuted Meta's denial. It has been documented that any application that receives Full Disk Access privilege can directly read all non-root chat histories, internet cookies, and private emails. In addition, it was determined that due to the configuration vulnerability detected on Muse, full control of the artificial intelligence assistant could be taken over by hackers through ClickFix attacks.

Apple, which published an official announcement following the escalation of illegal usage reports, announced that it has made radical changes in the macOS security architecture.

Apple officials targeting Meta and similar third-party developers without naming them; "Some developers are risking Full Disk Access to expose users' emails, messages and search histories without their knowledge and consent. As artificial intelligence agents become increasingly autonomous, the danger posed by this level of access increases," he declared, stating that the permission system would be narrowed.

Experts point out that the unrestricted data access rights of artificial intelligence assistants are as dangerous as "cutting electrical tools" and emphasize the risk of user data being leaked into commercial artificial intelligence models.

Following the scandal, e-commerce and cloud giant Amazon also decided to block the Meta Muse application from its platforms. With Apple's intervention, a new and strict legal era has officially begun that restricts artificial intelligence agents' access to user data in desktop operating systems.