DeepSeek API key
ID |
deepseek_apikey |
Severity |
high |
Remediation Complexity |
trivial |
Remediation Risk |
high |
Remediation Effort |
low |
Vendor |
DeepSeek |
Family |
API Token |
Description
DeepSeek serves its chat and reasoning models through an OpenAI-compatible API.
sk- followed by 32 hex digits. The sk- prefix is shared with several vendors, so the
fixed 32 hex-digit body is what tells a DeepSeek key apart from an OpenAI key (48 or more
mixed-case characters) or a Stability AI key (48 characters).
Security
A leaked DeepSeek key grants an attacker the same access as the application that owns it:
-
Unauthorized usage is billed to your account, and automated high-volume calls can run up a large charge before anyone notices.
-
Whatever is sent through the leaked key — prompts, documents, query results — is exposed to whoever holds it.
-
The key does not expire on its own, so the exposure lasts until it is revoked.
Mitigation / Fix
-
Follow your policy for handling leaked secrets, which normally requires revoking the key. Go to [DeepSeek Platform > API keys], delete the leaked key and create a new one.
Revoke the leaked key, do not merely disable it. -
Remove the leaked key from the source code or committed configuration file, and replace its usages with the new value. Environment variables, local files or secret vaults could be used for passing the key, instead of hardcoding the value, as documented in How to Prevent Hard-Coded Secrets.
-
Review the usage and audit logs for the key, to confirm that it was not used by unintended actors while it was exposed.
-
Apply the usual precautions for API keys: never commit them, pass them through environment variables or a secret manager, use a separate key per environment, monitor usage for unusual spikes, and rotate them periodically.
|
You should consider any sensitive data in commits with secrets as compromised. Remember that secrets may be removed from history in your projects, but not in other users' cloned or forked repositories. |