North Korean hackers suspected in $351M crypto theft, the largest so far this year
- ID
- 28510
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 25 Sep 2026, 9:24 PM
- Fetched
- 25 Sep 2026, 10:57 PM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/25/north-korean-hackers-suspected-in-351m-crypto-theft-the-largest-so-far-this-year/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 3.5
- Created
- 25 Sep 2026, 10:58 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developerssaas_startup_founders
What happened
Bitget, a crypto exchange, lost more than $351 million in an attack on Thursday that the company says involved unauthorized transfers from its internet-connected hot wallets; withdrawals on its network have been suspended with no reopening date given. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen called the pattern 'highly consistent with known patterns of North Korean hacker organizations,' and blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs attributes roughly three-quarters of all crypto thefts in 2026 to date to North Korea. It is the largest known crypto heist this year, topping a $340 million September hack that returned all but $47 million, and Bitget says its $464 million user protection fund should cover the loss.
Why it matters
The concrete lesson is hot-wallet sizing: the stolen funds sat in wallets 'connected to the internet and designed to be used for active trading,' while Bitget's $464 million protection fund is what absorbs the $351 million hit. If you build or advise anything that custodies user funds — exchange, payment rail, treasury automation, or an agent with signing keys — the decision to change is how much balance you keep hot versus in cold storage, and whether you have a reserve large enough to cover a full hot-wallet drain. Also note the report's claim that such collectives have been suspected of targeting open-source software to mass-hack victims: if you maintain or depend on widely-used OSS packages, that is a supply-chain exposure, not just an exchange problem.
Discussion angle
Ask what hot-wallet-to-cold-storage ratio the builders in the room actually run, and whether anyone has a reserve that could absorb a 100% hot-wallet loss — the $351M loss against a $464M fund is the only ratio in this story that's directly transferable to smaller teams.