Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack on DeepSeek Servers?

It is reported that: “From 25th to 29th January 2025, 83 hours, DeepSeek Server cluster, received more than 230 million DDos malicious requests per second, the total amount of attacks is equivalent to three days of European network traffic combined.

A few Chinese Internet companies came to the rescue to defend against the attack, and this epic story of working together helped to roll out a fix for a massive, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack

Maybe: DeepSeek and Kimi challenged in an uncomfortable way many deeply held “Western” assumptions about innovation, markets, government regulation, and China.

Maybe the AI-leading tech and some nations debate whether to shun or embrace the company’s cost-effective technology.

"Deregulating" implies that something is already regulated; machine learning applications have not been. Would the ill-conceived sort of move by many AI safety advocates, will retard innovation?

DeepSeek caught up with OpenAI o1 quickly, sending shockwaves to all the US companies. US keeping Chinese firms ‘one generation behind’ has been the tactic for years, but Chinese tech companies are going toe-to-toe with the biggest US corporations.

The DeepSeek DDoS Attack: What Happened?

The timing of the attack coincided with DeepSeek’s announcement of a new AI model, a direct competitor to U.S.-based AI platforms. The market response was swift, with a decline in U.S. tech stocks following the surge of DeepSeek's AI in popularity.

This raised suspicions that the attack could have been motivated by competitive sabotage or geopolitical factors.

DeepSeek experienced a significant cybersecurity incident, forcing the company to halt new user registrations. The primary attack vector was a massive DDoS campaign that overwhelmed the company’s servers, disrupting its services. Although existing users remained unaffected, new users faced disruptions during the registration process.

Further analysis revealed that the attacks intensified throughout the month, employing increasingly sophisticated techniques, including password brute-force attacks, which attempted to compromise user accounts by guessing password combinations.

Was it a Real DDoS Threat to DeepSeek

DDoS attacks aim to cripple online services by flooding networks with excessive traffic, rendering them inaccessible to legitimate users. These attacks are increasingly used for ransom extortion, competitive disruption, and even political sabotage. According to cybersecurity analysts, the frequency of attacks exceeding 1 terabit per second (Tbps) has risen sharply, with attackers leveraging botnets of compromised IoT devices and cloud servers to amplify their impact.

?The attack on DeepSeek highlights key trends in modern DDoS threats:

Scale and Complexity: Attackers are using multi-vector techniques, combining volumetric, protocol-based, and application-layer attacks.

IoT Exploitation: Poorly secured IoT devices continue to be weaponized for large-scale botnet attacks.

Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: Threat actors are exploiting undocumented vulnerabilities to maximize disruption.

The DeepSeek cyberattack underscores the growing risks of DDoS threats in today’s digital landscape. As cybercriminals continue to innovate, businesses must stay ahead by implementing robust cybersecurity measures. Transparency in reporting and collaboration with cybersecurity experts. As has been seen in DeepSeek’s response, will be vital in mitigating future attacks and strengthening industry resilience.

References

[1] AP News, “DeepSeek AI faces cyberattacks after topping App Store charts,” Jan. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://apnews.com/article/deepseek-ai-artificial-intelligence-be414acadbf35070d7645fe9fbd8f464

[2] Global Times, “DeepSeek halts new signups amid large-scale cyberattack,” Jan. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202501/1327676.shtml?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[3] Bleeping Computer, “DeepSeek limits registrations due to cyber-attack,” Jan. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/deepseek-halts-new-signups-amid-large-scale-cyberattack/

[4] The Guardian, “Global tech sell-off: DeepSeek’s AI breakthrough shakes US markets,” Jan. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2025/jan/28/global-tech-sell-off-trump-deepseek-wake-up-call-us-ai-firms-business-live

[5] Reuters, “DeepSeek limits registrations following DDoS attack,” Jan. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/deepseek-limits-registrations-due-cyber-attack-2025-01-27/

DDOS a tool to Contain DeepSeek?

Do Tech Companies in the US justify the DDOS campaign against DeepSeek to contain its widespread proliferation? As OpenAI said it has evidence that DeepSeek used “distillation” of its GPT models to train the open-source V3 and R1 models at a fraction of the cost of what Western tech giants are spending on their models. OpenAI and Microsoft have started investigating whether a group linked to DeepSeek exfiltrated large amounts of data through an application programming interface (API) in the autumn.

Since Chinese Artificial Intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek rattled Silicon Valley and Wall Street with its cost-effective models, the company has been accused of data theft through a practice that is common across the industry.

The DeepSeek R1 model represents novel techniques it employs, in Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Model Distillation.

Distillation is a means of training smaller models to mimic the behavior of larger, more sophisticated models.

The tech tug-o-war between AI Titans may bring more transparency and Openness. Thanks to DeepSeek, thanks to the Chinese state authoritarian regime allowing democrating AI.