Bitget highlights North Korea behind $350M hack

Bitget says it has strong indications that North Korea is behind the $350 million hack. On 24 September, the crypto exchange detected unauthorised transfers from several hot wallets. Bitget CEO Gracie Chen states that the team has identified IP addresses with VPN usage patterns matching a group linked to North Korea, making a North Korean connection “highly likely”.

In brief:

• Bitget detected unauthorised transfers on 24 September from hot wallets
• The hack involved ETH, XRP, BNB, AVAX, USDT, USDC and other altcoins across multiple blockchains
• Bitget says protection funds and own reserves are fully sufficient to cover users

Attackers did not obtain private keys

An important detail: according to Bitget, the attackers did not gain possession of the private keys of the exchange’s hot, warm or cold wallets. Instead, they breached Bitget’s internal system and transferred funds directly.

The hack spread across multiple blockchain networks. Affected networks included Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, Binance Smart Chain and Base. Bitget stresses, however, that all cold wallets on all chains remained secure.

Bitget says user funds are fully covered

According to Chen, Bitget has sufficient resources to compensate all affected users. The exchange has a protection fund of more than $464 million and additionally holds more than $1 billion in own assets. This means that user funds are fully covered on a 1:1 basis.

Chen added that Bitget Wallet, the company’s decentralised wallet, operates completely separately from the exchange and was not affected by the incident. The funds in Bitget Wallet are therefore safe.

Investigation ongoing, some wallets already frozen

Bitget says it has contacted all involved blockchain foundations. Several of them have already frozen the hacker’s wallet addresses. The exchange states it is fully co-operating with relevant authorities worldwide in the investigation.

Bitget does not want to make firm promises about when users will be able to withdraw their money. Chen said the exchange aims for a full recovery “as soon as possible” and will announce an exact timeline once it is confirmed. The company says it does not want to promise a deadline it cannot meet.