North Korea 'Likely' Behind $388M Hack of Crypto Exchange Bitget
5 hours ago
- Bitget lost about $387.5 million after hackers compromised its backend system, not private keys, spoofing transaction data to trigger fund transfers.
- North Korea is blamed for the theft, with evidence including IP addresses, on-chain links to previous DPRK-attributed hacks like Bybit, and analysis from firms like Elliptic and ZachXBT.
- Bitget’s User Protection Fund, valued at over $464 million, covers the loss; withdrawals are paused pending review, but deposits and trading continue.
- The stolen assets include XRP, ETH, USDT, USDC, and others; most EVM-chain funds were swapped to ETH; Circle and Tether blacklisted one address holding $318,000.
- Bitget launched a recovery bounty offering 5% for freezing or recovering funds; some blockchain foundations have already frozen attacker wallets.
- The hack is the largest suspected North Korean crypto theft of 2026, contributing to over $1 billion in DPRK-related heists this year, amid a record year for crypto exploits.
- Security experts note rising threats from AI-driven vulnerability discovery, and previous major hacks on Liquid Network and Coldcard have also occurred in 2026.