Vercel
Security FAQ

What security issues do Vercel apps have?

Get instant answers about your app's security.

Short Answer

Vercel apps surface a predictable distribution of issues: 0 critical-impact classes (none), 2 high-impact, 3 medium-or-below. The critical ones are what cause data breaches.

Detailed Answer

High-severity issues

  • **Environment Variable Misconfiguration**: Secrets in wrong scope (Development vs Preview vs Production).
  • **Serverless Function Logging**: Secrets accidentally logged in function console output.

Medium/low-severity issues

  • **Preview Deployment Exposure**: Preview URLs expose unreleased features without authentication.
  • **Missing Security Headers**: Deployed sites without CSP, HSTS, or frame protection.
  • **Edge Function Security Gaps**: Edge functions with improper auth or CORS configuration.

Why these are the issues specific to Vercel

Vercel apps ship with a recognizable stack (supabase, firebase, postgres). The issue list above is what appears when you scan that specific combination. A Firebase-backed app would have a different top-5; a self-hosted Postgres deployment would have yet another. Context is everything.

What VAS checks in a Vercel scan

  • **Env Variable Security** — Check environment variable configuration and exposure.
  • **Serverless Security** — Analyze serverless functions for vulnerabilities.
  • **Headers Config** — Verify security headers in vercel.json.
  • **Auth Protection** — Check authentication on protected routes.

Security Research & Statistics

10.3%

of Lovable applications (170 out of 1,645) had exposed user data in the CVE-2025-48757 incident

Source: CVE-2025-48757 security advisory

4.45 million USD

average cost of a data breach in 2023

Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023

500,000+

developers using vibe coding platforms like Lovable, Bolt, and Replit

Source: Combined platform statistics 2024-2025

Expert Perspectives

Vibe coding your way to a production codebase is clearly risky. Most of the work we do as software engineers involves evolving existing systems, where the quality and understandability of the underlying code is crucial.

Simon WillisonSecurity Researcher, Django Co-creator

The problem with AI-generated code isn't that it doesn't work - it's that it works just well enough to ship, but contains subtle security flaws that are hard to spot.

Security Research CommunityCollective wisdom from security researchers

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More Questions About This Topic

Which Vercel security issue is most dangerous?

Environment Variable Misconfiguration. Secrets in wrong scope (Development vs Preview vs Production). This is the highest-impact finding because it tends to expose the full dataset or grant lateral movement in one step. The fix: Audit variable scopes in Vercel dashboard. Use correct environment targeting.

Are these issues unique to Vercel, or do they appear across platforms?

The patterns overlap with netlify, railway, render — all vibe-coding platforms share the "AI-generated code prioritizes functionality over security" problem. But the *specific manifestation* differs per platform. An exposed Supabase anon key is structurally different from an exposed Firebase config, which is different from an exposed Postgres connection string. The right scan is platform-aware.

How do I see which of these issues my Vercel app has?

Run a VAS scan against your deployed Vercel app URL. It checks every issue in the list above, confirms each by actually probing (not just reading headers), and prioritizes by severity with copy-paste fixes. Most Vercel app scans return results in 2–3 minutes.