Crypto CEO accuses North Korea of stealing $387 million from Bitget platform

Singaporean crypto platform Bitget said hackers stole more than $387 million from its exchange after suffering a breach on Thursday.

The company’s CEO, Gracy Chen, held a town hall after the incident and said evidence linked the theft to hackers from North Korea — which has stolen billions from other cryptocurrency platforms over the last five years.

Blockchain security firms initially saw more than $175 million leave the platform on Thursday before larger chunks were stolen from Bitget. Chen said the company’s security team initially detected unauthorized transfers and immediately activated emergency protocols. 

She confirmed that the initial estimate of the losses amounts to $387.5 million. She noted that the company has a User Protection Fund that has over $464 million and those funds will be used to cover the losses. 

Withdrawals from the platform are currently suspended while the company works with security firms Mandiant and SlowMist on the recovery effort. Law enforcement and other crypto platforms were notified about the incident. 

Chen later explained that an investigation found hackers had breached a backend system of Bitget’s wallet services and exploited vulnerabilities to enable unauthorized transfers. 

“Bitget has navigated multiple market cycles. We will not run from this. Every dollar and every decision will be accounted for, transparently and in full,” Chen said. 

The hackers stole ETH, XRP, USDC and several other coins. Chen noted that several platforms have already frozen some funds connected to the hackers’ wallets. She added that there is now a recovery bounty program where platforms will get 5% for voluntarily freezing attacker funds and 5% if funds are recovered. 

In later comments, she said IP addresses, behavioral patterns and on-chain signatures indicated that the attack is tied to North Korean-linked hacker groups. 

“We have notified relevant authorities and are cooperating fully with them globally,” Chen said during the town hall. 

Other blockchain experts began to track the funds and found links to past crypto thefts conducted by North Korea’s Lazarus Group – a notorious hacking operation accused of perpetrating several high profile heists. 

The country’s government stole more than $2 billion in similar attacks last year and brought in $3 billion from attacks on cryptocurrency platforms between 2017 and 2023, according to United Nations investigators.

Earlier this year, North Korean hackers allegedly conducted two attacks that saw them steal $280 million from the crypto platform Kelp and another $290 million from the Drift crypto platform in a sophisticated operation involving fake companies, alleged actors and more.

During her town hall, Chen mentioned North Korea’s theft of $1.5 billion from Dubai-based platform Bybit last year, noting that the company was able to survive the incident. 

“If Bybit can hold on [after] a $1.5 billion loss, we can definitely hold on to a $350 million+ loss,” she said. “Just like Bybit can hold on after their bank run and liquidity issue, we can too.”