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DeepSeek Restricts Registrations Following Cyberattacks
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Updated on Jan 28, 2025
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Fact-Checked by Justyn Newman Lead Cybersecurity Editor
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek temporarily restricted new user registrations on Monday following “large-scale malicious attacks” targeting its services. Despite the disruption, the company reassured its existing users that logins would remain unaffected.
In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!
- DeepSeek restricted new user registrations due to “large-scale malicious attacks.”
- The cyberattacks began around 9:33 PM CST on January 27.
- Website outages were DeepSeek’s longest in 90 days.
The announcement came on the same day DeepSeek’s AI Assistant overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store in the United States. This remarkable rise in popularity appears to have coincided with the cyberattacks and subsequent service interruptions.
According to The Register, the attacks began at approximately 9:33 PM China Standard Time (CST) on January 27, equivalent to 5:33 AM PST in the United States. At the time of reporting, the disruption was ongoing.
Despite the issues, Google’s single sign-on feature for registrations and logins was reportedly operational as of 10:30 AM PST. DeepSeek has not yet responded to requests for comments regarding the situation, as reported by The Register.
Reuters reports that earlier on Monday, the company also faced website outages that affected user access. According to DeepSeek’s status page, the issues were resolved later in the day, with fixes applied to its application programming interface and website login systems.
The company noted that these disruptions were its longest in the past 90 days, a stark contrast to its otherwise stable performance, as reported by Reuters.
DeepSeek’s meteoric rise in popularity comes amid growing global interest in artificial intelligence-powered tools. The timing of the attacks, paired with DeepSeek’s newfound prominence, raises questions about the challenges AI companies face as they scale up rapidly.
For now, the company remains focused on stabilizing its services and addressing the fallout from this unexpected surge in demand.
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