Bitget and Liquid Network Breaches Lead to Record $768 Million Crypto Theft in September

Crypto thefts reached an all-time high in September, with hackers draining $768 million from various platforms. Two major breaches on Bitget and Liquid Network accounted for roughly 92% of the total losses.

The attacks on these exchanges were particularly severe: Bitget lost approximately $387.5 million after a breach on September 24, while an exploit on the Liquid Network resulted in around $318.7 million worth of losses. A substantial portion of the stolen funds from the Liquid Network was recovered quickly, but about $602 BTC remained outstanding.

The attacks were complex and involved different mechanisms: Bitget's exchange was compromised through third-party security software, while the Liquid Network exploit used a flaw in the Elements codebase to create fake Liquid Bitcoin. The attackers then withdrew real BTC from the network, reducing its reserve from 4,205 BTC to just 197 BTC.

Blockstream deployed an emergency patch and released an updated version of Elements with a hardened proof-cache implementation after the Liquid Network breach. Bitget resumed withdrawals for several assets but is still recovering from the attack. Circle and Tether froze $318,000 in stablecoins linked to the incident, while Bitget is offering a 5% bounty for assistance that leads to asset recovery.