CrowdStrike says DeepSeek’s reasoning model, DeepSeek-R1, produces significantly less secure code when prompts include politically sensitive topics for Beijing, such as Tibet or the Uyghurs. The firm found the model generated vulnerable code in 19% of baseline tests, but the rate of severe flaws rose to 27.2%—nearly a 50% increase—when geopolitical modifiers were added. Examples included a faulty PHP PayPal webhook with hard-coded secrets and an Android app for a Uyghur community that lacked basic authentication and session management; 35% of such implementations used no hashing or insecure methods. Researchers also observed what they described as an “intrinsic kill switch,” with the model crafting internal plans before refusing outputs tied to banned subjects like Falun Gong. CrowdStrike attributed the pattern to training guardrails designed to comply with Chinese law. The findings echo broader concerns: OX Security reported several AI code builders defaulted to cross-site scripting risks, while SquareX flagged a now-mitigated issue in Perplexity’s Comet browser that could have enabled command execution via the Model Context Protocol. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau has urged caution with Chinese GenAI tools, citing propaganda and cybersecurity risks. For enterprises, the research underscores the need for rigorous validation and governance when integrating AI-generated code into production.
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