Five percent of the databases are vulnerable to threat actors: It's a gold mine of exploit opportunity in thousands of mobile apps, researchers say.

Firebase is a Google-backed database optimized for synchronizing data to the cloud. It's a key player in the rush for distributed databases.

Appthority found that of the 1,275 iOS apps using a Firebase database, 600 were vulnerable. Overall, more than 3,000 apps were leaking data from 2,271 misconfigured databases.

In addition to Genkit, the Firebase team also today announced support for SQL databases, powered by Firebase Data Connect, a new service powered by Google’s Cloud SQL Postgres database.