A few days ago, the Bitget cryptocurrency exchange was hit by a cyberattack that resulted in the transfer of digital assets worth approximately $387.5 million to addresses controlled by the attackers, in an incident that the security intelligence firm TRM Labs said was the largest cryptocurrency theft in terms of value so far this year.
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Bitgate raised its initial estimate of losses from $351.6 million to $387.5 million after accounting for additional assets on its Zcash and TRON networks.
The company explained that the affected funds were in layers of hot and warm wallets used to process transactions, while cold wallets – which keep the bulk of the assets away from direct internet access – remained safe.
According to the platform's CEO, Gracie Chen, the attack did not involve stealing wallet private keys, but rather targeted a back-end system linked to the wallet's infrastructure. The attackers were able to manipulate transaction data reaching the authorization system, making malicious transfers appear legitimate, thus passing them through the approval mechanism and transferring funds to addresses under their control.
This mechanism indicates that the vulnerability was not necessarily in the key that signs the transaction, but rather in the systems that determine what should be signed and approved. In other words, the attacker was able to deceive the control and authorization layer instead of possessing the private key itself.
In a subsequent update, Bitgate said its team had identified the attack path and the vulnerability that was exploited, and that it had addressed the flaw, while Mandiant and SlowMist continued their independent investigation into the incident. The platform did not disclose in its official updates all the technical details regarding how the system was first accessed.
TRM Labs' analysis revealed that a significant portion of the funds was split across new addresses within a short period, while other assets began moving through various platforms and protocols, complicating their tracking and recovery. The firm also identified pathways where some assets were used to convert to other currencies, including the transfer of some funds to the Bitcoin network via inter-network exchanges.
Bitgate says users' balances were not affected, cold wallets were not compromised, and confirmed that Bitgate Wallet—a self-custodial wallet operating on a separate infrastructure—was not affected by the incident. The company said the value of the loss falls within the coverage of the User Protection Fund, which was worth more than $464 million at the time of the attack.
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