Everyone in the tech world has been talking about DeepSeek R1 lately. Many YouTubers have covered it, praising how well it works.
I tested it myself to see what the excitement was about. And DeepSeek truly is impressive.
There’s something truly magical about seeing how an AI is thinking and reasoning before giving a final answer.
If you're more of a visual learner, I recommend checking out my YouTube tutorial.
The DeepLeak Incident
However, recent developments have raised some serious concerns about its security infrastructure. If you've tried to use DeepSeek's chat service or sign up for their API in the past week, you might have run into some problems.
Here's why:
A security company called Wiz Research found something they named "DeepLeak." They discovered an unprotected database that contained sensitive DeepSeek information - things like secret keys, chat messages, and internal system details. Wiz Research found this database just by looking at DeepSeek's public systems.
Security Vulnerabilities
The concerning part was that the database had no protection at all! This meant anyone could have accessed users' chat messages and DeepSeek's private information. It even put their servers at risk.
Response and Resolution
The good news is that Wiz Research did the right thing.They told DeepSeek about the problem right away, and DeepSeek quickly took the database offline and added protection.
Because of this security problem, many people couldn't use DeepSeek's services. When trying to access the chat or create new accounts, users just got error messages. DeepSeek posted a notice saying they had to limit new registrations because of attacks on their services.
This shows us something important: while DeepSeek created impressive AI technology, they missed some basic security measures.
Alternatives and Recommendations
For those worried about security, there's another option: you can run AI models on your own computer using Ollama.
If you have enough GPU power and storage space, you can run DeepSeek models locally. I have another article that shows you how to set up Ollama on Mac: A Guide to Using Ollama
Conclusion
If you can't run the models locally, you can still use DeepSeek's online services. Just remember that when you use any online service, you're trusting that company with your data. Sometimes that trust can be broken, as we saw with DeepSeek.
We should be thankful that security researchers out there check if these tools are safe to use. Let's hope DeepSeek fixes these security issues soon.
Remember to think about security whenever you use any AI service, no matter which company made it!
