Crypto Hacks Hit $766M in September With Bitget and Liquid Leading Losses

Strip out Bitget and Liquid, and the other 53 September hacks total about $59 million, less than half of the $136.3 million lost in August.

PeckShield counted 55 major crypto hacks in September, totaling $766.49 million in losses.

That is about 462% above August’s $136.3 million, and two incidents account for nearly all of it.

Two Breaches Dominate the Month

The Bitget incident, at about $387 million, and the Liquid Network theft of about $320 million, of which $285 million was returned, are now the largest and second-largest crypto thefts of the year to date, PeckShield noted. They moved past the Drift and KelpDAO/LayerZero exploits. But take them out and the other 53 hacks add up to about $59 million, under half of August’s total.

As CryptoPotato reported earlier, Bitget stated that its security systems flagged unauthorized transfers from parts of its hot wallets at 18:31 UTC on September 24. CEO Gracy Chen explained that the attacker got into a backend system in the wallet infrastructure, spoofed transaction data, and tricked the authorization process into releasing funds.

The CEO ruled out a private key compromise and noted that cold wallets, which hold most of the exchange’s assets, were not touched. The exchange plans to cover the loss from its User Protection Fund, which holds more than $464 million.