DeepSeek exposes database with over 1 million chat records

DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup known for its DeepSeek-R1 LLM model, has publicly exposed two databases containing sensitive user and operational information. The unsecured ClickHouse instances reportedly held over a million log entries containing user chat history in plaintext form, API keys, backend details, and operational metadata. Wiz Research discovered this exposure during a security assessment of DeepSeek's external infrastructure. The security firm found two publicly accessible database instances at oauth2callback.deepseek.com:9000 and dev.deepseek.com:9000 that allowed arbitrary SQL queries via a web interface without requiring authentication. The databases contained a 'log_stream' table that stored sensitive internal logs dating from January 6, 2025, containing: "This level of access posed a critical risk to DeepSeek's own security and for its end-users," comments Wiz. "Not only an attacker could retrieve sensitive logs and actual plaintext chat messages, but they could also potentially exfiltrate plaintext passwords and local files along propriety information directly from the server using queries like: SELECT * FROM file('filename') depending on their ClickHouse configuration." Wiz says it could execute more intrusive queries but limited its exploration to enumeration to keep its research within certain ethical constraints. It is unknown if Wiz's researchers were the first to discover this exposure or if malicious actors have already taken advantage of the misc...