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DeepSeek temporarily restricted new registrations on January 27–28, 2025, after saying it was facing “large-scale malicious attacks.” The company said existing users could still log in; contemporary reports also described degraded web and API performance. The incident was a reported attack and availability problem—not a publicly confirmed data breach. The available reporting does not establish who was responsible, how the attacks worked, or whether user data was accessed.
What happened in January 2025?
As attention surged around DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model, the company limited new account registrations. Its notice attributed the restriction to “large-scale malicious attacks” and said existing users could log in normally. Contemporary reporting said DeepSeek’s web and API services were also experiencing degraded performance. EFE’s report covered the service notice and disruption; Axios reported the restriction on January 27.
The incident is best dated January 27–28, 2025. Reports used different time zones and appeared on different days. On January 30, Italy’s data-protection authority recorded that registration remained limited while previously registered users could log in. It also noted that the app was unavailable in Italian Apple and Google app stores at that time, in the context of a separate privacy proceeding—not as a demonstrated consequence of the attack. The authority’s record is jurisdiction-specific.
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- DeepSeek said: It was temporarily limiting registrations because of large-scale malicious attacks, while existing users could log in.
- Contemporary reporting said: Web and API performance was degraded during the disruption.
- Not publicly established in the cited reporting: The attackers’ identity or motive, the technical method, the full duration and scope, or whether anyone accessed or stole user data.
DeepSeek did not publicly confirm that the event was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. That is one possible explanation for malicious traffic, but it should not be stated as fact. The public description does not rule out other forms of abuse, either.
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Was it a data breach?
The registration restriction does not, by itself, show that account records or other data were breached. A provider can throttle sign-ups to protect service availability without an attacker gaining access to stored information. The incident reports cited here do not confirm data theft or access to prompts, account details, or API keys. That is different from proving that no data was affected: the publicly available details do not settle the question.
Keep this January 2025 availability incident separate from any later report of a database exposure unless a reliable source explicitly links the events. A separate security report would not establish that data was taken during this registration restriction.
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Why was DeepSeek under pressure?
The attacks were reported during an unusually sharp rise in legitimate interest. DeepSeek’s app reached the top of Apple’s free-app rankings in the United States. Axios, citing Appfigures, reported 2.6 million downloads on the Sunday before its January 27 article, including one million on the preceding Friday.
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Who was affected?
- People trying to sign up: New registrations could be restricted or delayed. Contemporary reports described limits affecting some registration methods or phone numbers, but that does not establish a universal, lasting rule.
- Existing users: DeepSeek said they could continue logging in; Italy’s authority recorded the same distinction on January 30. This was not a statement that every feature worked normally.
- API customers: Reports described degraded API performance. Having an account does not guarantee that API requests will be available, fast, or within capacity limits.
- Users in Italy: The authority recorded app-store unavailability there on January 30 in connection with its privacy proceeding. That should not be confused with a global ban or attributed solely to the cyberattack.
If you are having trouble accessing DeepSeek
This was a historical January 2025 incident, not evidence that DeepSeek is currently restricting registrations. If access is a problem now, first identify whether the issue is account creation, login, or API requests; those have different causes.
- Use DeepSeek’s official website or documentation, and avoid resold accounts, disposable-number services, and copied API endpoints.
- If registration displays an unsupported email-domain error, DeepSeek’s FAQ says a major international provider such as Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, or Yahoo may be needed. Do not assume that this error means there is another attack.
- If you already have an account, try your normal login rather than creating duplicate accounts. Avoid repeatedly submitting registration attempts during a suspected abuse-control event.
- For API failures, check the response code, account status or balance, and applicable concurrency limits separately. DeepSeek’s API documentation describes account- and model-level concurrency controls and HTTP 429 responses when limits are exceeded. These operational controls are distinct from the January 2025 sign-up restriction.
Developers should handle rate limits and temporary failures with bounded retries and backoff rather than launching repeated requests in a loop. For applications that need reliable access, consider a fallback provider and make sure any intermediary receives only data you are willing to share. Availability is not a substitute for reviewing a provider’s privacy and data-handling terms.
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What the incident means for users and developers
For someone who only wants to try a chatbot, a temporary registration block may simply mean waiting or using another official service. Whether DeepSeek is suitable also depends on availability in your region and whether its data practices are appropriate for your use. Do not submit confidential work to any AI service until you have assessed its terms and controls.
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For a production application, treat registration, API capacity, rate limits, and provider reliability as separate concerns. Review current limits and model availability in the provider’s documentation; implement 429 handling, measured retries, and provider redundancy where an outage would matter. A third-party wrapper may keep an application running, but it can also receive prompts, credentials, billing information, and logs. Confirm who operates it and what it retains.
DeepSeek’s API documentation describes an OpenAI-compatible interface, but model names, pricing, and availability can change. Check the current official pricing and model documentation before building against a particular model. Registration access alone is not a guarantee of API capacity or a contractual uptime commitment.
What remains unanswered
DeepSeek’s public notice was a service-continuity statement, not a detailed incident report. The available sources do not identify the attack method or source, explain how long the malicious activity continued, quantify its impact on performance, or establish whether any data was accessed. Without those details, it is not possible to make a definitive technical assessment of the event or conclude that user information was compromised—or that it was not.
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