Security researchers discovered that the popular Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek, whose website is the most downloaded app in the United States, contains code that could send user login information to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company barred from operating in the US. The code, found in the chatbot's web login page, appears to connect to China Mobile's computer infrastructure and could potentially transfer user data. This discovery raises concerns about the security of user data and the potential for Chinese government access to sensitive information.
WASHINGTON—The website of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, whose chatbot became the most downloaded app in the United States, has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States, security researchers say.
The growth of Chinese-controlled digital services has become a major topic of concern for US national security officials. Lawmakers in Congress last year on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis voted to force the Chinese parent company of the popular video-sharing app TikTok to divest or face a nationwide ban though the app has since received a 75-day reprieve from President Donald Trump, who is hoping to work out a sale.
The US Federal Communications Commission unanimously denied China Mobile authority to operate in the United States in 2019, citing “substantial” national security concerns about links between the company and the Chinese state. In 2021, the Biden administration also issued sanctions limiting the ability of Americans to invest in China Mobile after the Pentagon linked it to the Chinese military.
Stewart Baker, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and consultant who has previously served as a top official at the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency, said DeepSeek “raises all of the TikTok concerns plus you’re talking about information that is highly likely to be of more national security and personal significance than anything people do on TikTok,” one of the world’s most popular social media platforms.
Feroot, which specializes in identifying threats on the web, identified computer code that is downloaded and triggered when a user logs into DeepSeek. According to the company’s analysis, the code appears to capture detailed information about the device a user logs in from—a process called fingerprinting. Such techniques are widely used by tech companies around the world for security, verification and ad targeting.
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