Security

The attackers didn't steal private keys from Bitget’s wallets. They got into a backend system, manipulated the transaction data and then used that altered information to get Bitget’s own authorization process to approve the transfers as legitimate.

Chainalysis published its blockchain dead-drop research on September 17, and the headline number recorded a 420% increase over twelve months in malware instructions being written to public blockchains.

By the time researchers at Galaxy Digital had finished assessing the incident, roughly 1,816 BTC, worth close to $116 million, had been moved from more than 5,200 addresses across four separate waves. The largest of those sweeps alone took 1,082 BTC from 1,196 wallets in just 41 minutes.

Maya Protocol lost an estimated $1.7 million in an exploit on Wednesday, and the numbers make the situation look even worse for the protocol as its Immunefi bug bounty, which covers the THORChain fork, puts the maximum payout for a critical vulnerability at just $35,000.

At first, the team described what happened as an “unexplained incident.” That didn’t last long. MANTRA later said an attacker had attempted to exploit a vulnerability in an upstream dependency software the chain relies on but doesn’t directly control.