Bitget suspects North Korean hackers in $352 million hack — CNBC
Cryptocurrency platform Bitget said it suspects North Korean hackers in a breach that resulted in the withdrawal of digital assets worth approximately $351.6 million. As CNBC Top News reports, preliminary findings of the investigation are based, among other things, on IP addresses linked to VPN services previously used by a North Korean hacking group.
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen also said that the nature of the attack resembles previous operations attributed to North Korea. At the same time, technical specialists are still determining the specific method used to penetrate the platform's systems.
Attack details
According to Chen, the unauthorized transfers were discovered on Thursday afternoon U.S. time. They involved 19 transactions from part of the platform's hot and warm wallets. Cold wallets, she said, remained protected.
The withdrawn assets included Ether, XRP, USDT, USDC, Avalanche and BNB on the Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Avalanche, BNB Smart Chain and Arbitrum networks. Early estimates based on blockchain data put the outflow at about $183 million, but Bitget said they did not cover transactions across all affected blockchains.
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Service operations and compensation
Chen said the attacker compromised a critical internal wallet system, altered transfer data and activated the authorization-signing process. The company said it managed to contain the attack and prevent further unauthorized withdrawals. Bitget ruled out the compromise of private keys.
Withdrawals from Bitget have been temporarily suspended while technical teams restore and strengthen the affected systems. Deposits and trading continue to operate. Chen said user balances remain accurate and that losses will be fully covered by the Bitget User Protection Fund, which holds more than $464 million. According to her, withdrawals may resume within hours or days, but should not take weeks.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said his team is ready to help Bitget. According to him, Bybit is also updating the LazarusBounty platform to track stolen funds.
