Hackers Drain $351.6m From Bitget Hot Wallets

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget has disclosed that hackers moved approximately $351.6 million in digital assets after gaining unauthorised access to part of its wallet infrastructure. The exchange said its security systems detected suspicious transfers from some hot wallets at 18:31 UTC on Thursday, September 24, prompting an emergency response. According to Bitget CEO Gracy Chen, the incident was confined to parts of the exchange’s hot and warm wallet layers, while its cold wallets remained secure. Withdrawals were temporarily suspended as a precaution, although deposits and trading continued. Bitget said the affected amount was covered by its User Protection Fund, which it valued at more than $464 million. Chen later disclosed that attackers had compromised a critical backend system, used it to manipulate transaction data and triggered the authorisation process to move assets. She said investigators had ruled out the compromise of private keys and confirmed that further unauthorised transfers had been prevented. The specific method used to access the backend system remains under investigation.

The affected assets included ETH, XRP, BNB, AVAX, USDT, USDC and other tokens across the Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, BSC and Base networks. Bitget said its on-chain cold wallets were unaffected and that its separate decentralised product, Bitget Wallet, also remained secure because it operates independently of the exchange’s infrastructure. Chen said the company had contacted the foundations of the affected blockchain networks, with some reportedly freezing addresses associated with the attackers. Based on IP behaviour and on-chain analysis, Bitget said the attack showed similarities with patterns previously associated with North Korean hacking organisations, while stressing that the investigation was ongoing. The exchange has notified law enforcement agencies and blockchain security firms and is working to contain the incident and recover the assets. Bitget said technical teams were carrying out system remediation and security upgrades but would not provide a withdrawal-restoration timeline until it was confirmed. The exchange also said it would release further updates and a detailed incident report covering the root cause and corrective measures.

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