Bitget Hackers Had 45 Minutes to Spare Before Moving $290M

Bitget's crypto exchange experienced a massive hack that left $387.5 million in attacker-controlled addresses. The breach occurred on September 24, with the exchange detecting unauthorized wallet transfers about 30 minutes before attackers began draining funds.

The security firm Hypernative reconstructed the attack and found that most losses came later: $87.6 million left hot wallets at 19:01 UTC, and another $202.8 million left warm wallets at 19:16 UTC. These two bursts accounted for about three-quarters of the total loss.

The exchange's response to the breach has raised questions. Hypernative identified several controls that could have interrupted the attack after the initial alert, including requiring signed transfers to correspond with independently stored customer withdrawal or approved treasury transactions. However, Bitget's security systems failed to implement these controls, allowing the compromised signing route to remain operational long enough for $290 million to leave in two major waves.