A tip for the spy: what consequences the DeepSeek data leak will cause

Cyberattacks on the Chinese neural network DeepSeek are just beginning and will soon become more active in the Internet space, experts interviewed by Izvestia believe. Earlier, American cybersecurity specialists in the field of cloud products found a lot of user data on the web as a result of the DeepSeek data leak. Programmers of the Chinese company managed to quickly solve the problem, but experts admit that this may be the machinations of competitors from the United States, as previously with TikTok. Read more - in the material "Izvestia".

Leak in DeepSeek

American experts from the company Wiz Research, which specializes in cybersecurity, said on January 29 that found a leak of confidential data of the Chinese startup in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) DeepSeek. More than 1 million lines of user information were left unprotected , including digital program keys, user request histories in the company's AI chat rooms, Reuters reported.

Wiz Research notified DeepSeek about the leak, and the Chinese deleted the data faster than an hour. However, experts believe that the problem was not overlooked by fraudsters and will have serious consequences. Alexei Gorelkin, CEO of Phishman, specified that the data of the Chinese AI model is stored in a decentralized manner, all over the world.

- Now DeepSeek is under real attack by US intelligence agencies. OpenAI and U.S. AI technologies are very heavily bet on in dollars. And when a more efficient and cheaper counterpart from the PRC came along , the investment was jeopardized. So now DeepSeek has a very big problem in cyberspace right now with attacks. I think that the work will continue through the media so that the company's shares are not so actively bought," the expert believes.

According to him, the massive cyber and informational attacks on the Chinese neural network indicate a real success in the stock market. In addition, some experts interviewed by Izvestia believe that the situation around DeepSeek may be a provocation by the United States, which created the vulnerability and then reported it through Wiz experts. One of the interlocutors of the editorial board believes that this may be the work of competitors from the AI sphere, as it happened earlier with TikTok.

In turn, IT specialist Sergey Pomortsev believes that criminals are already using DeepSeek's popularity to create phishing sites and fake tokens.

- Among the most well-known schemes to deceive users are cryptodrainer resources that use the DeepSeek logo and name, and when a user goes to the resource, they are offered to participate in token distribution and thus steal data. The second method involves the distribution of scam tokens that cannot be sold," he added.

According to the press service of F.A.C.C.T., phishing sites for pre-ordering DeepSeek scam tokens, including those using the name of a chatbot in the domain to attract victims, have been actively spreading on the Web. Users are offered to link a cryptocurrency wallet to be the first to receive the cryptocurrency. Eventually, cybercriminals steal the seed phrase (a sequence of words that serves as the main tool to regain access to a cryptocurrency wallet) and gain access to the victim's balance.

China vs. the U.S. in AI

Now the competitive struggle is centered precisely in the area of pre-learning open source models, Chinese projects contribute to the development of healthy competition and in this part is an unambiguously positive signal for the industry. There are only a few countries in the world, including Russia, that have the capacity to develop technologies of this level. The Chinese AI market and development companies are traditionally quite closed, and all statements related to DeepSeek will need to be scrutinized, according to the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence.

According to Dmitry Litovchenko, marketing director of WestLink Group, the U.S. has lost research dominance in 57 out of 64 critical technologies.

- In machine learning, China is almost three times more advanced than America, which mainly invests its efforts in language technologies. The PRC may begin to aggressively deploy its innovative technologies around the world, which will increase competition, redistribute market shares, and affect the position of technology giants (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.). The United States is likely to soon start active sanctions pressure on China to maintain its dominance in the field of artificial intelligence," the speaker notes.

According to the MTS AI press office, the uniqueness of Chinese big language development models Deepseek and Alibaba is different : they are open source. Developers and companies can learn the model for free, adapt it to specific tasks and deploy it on their servers. This means that it can, for example, be given the right data in Russian, and it will solve the bank's task better than ChatGPT, while all the information of this credit organization will remain in its closed loop.

- Thus, open source models are already on par with proprietary models such as ChatGPT, which will put serious pressure on OpenAI's business to the point where the company will have to significantly revise its pricing policy. "In this respect, Sam Altman's statements on 'super AI' and the race with China seem logical in order to attract maximum resources from the government and investors at this stage," MTS AI added.

US sanctions have not slowed down China's development - on the contrary, it has adapted and is now striving for technological independence. The country has already announced the creation of its own analog of Stargate with investments of 1 trillion yuan (about $138 billion), which indicates serious intentions to take a leading position in AI with a large gap in the future, said Vladislav Laptev, director of innovation at Fork-Tech. According to him, this may force the US to increase investments in AI development and revise its export policy in order not to lose its global technological dominance. In the future, American companies risk losing to Chinese competitors not only in technology, but also in the availability of solutions for business, which may change the balance of power in the global AI market, the expert concluded.