PeckShield counted 55 major crypto hacks in September totaling $766.49 million, with two incidents — Bitget and Liquid Network — accounting for nearly all of it. Strip those two out, and the remaining 53 hacks add up to about $59 million, less than half of August's total.
PeckShield tracked 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 drove nearly all of the increase.
Bitget and Liquid Network dominate the month
The Bitget incident, at about $387 million, is now the largest crypto theft of the year to date. The Liquid Network theft of about $320 million, of which $285 million was returned, ranks second, and both moved past the Drift and KelpDAO/LayerZero exploits. Strip out those two breaches, however, and the other 53 September hacks total about $59 million, under half of August's total.
Bitget said its security systems flagged unauthorized transfers at 18:31 UTC on September 24, hitting parts of its hot wallets. 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.
Chen 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. According to Bitget: "We will not run away from this, and every dollar will be accounted for," Chen wrote on X.
Liquid Network hackers promise a return
The Liquid Network loss came earlier, on September 6, when purported white-hat hackers withdrew roughly 4,000 BTC from the Liquid Federation wallet. The withdrawal used the SideSwap peg-out authorization key, though Liquid noted that the key itself was not compromised.
In on-chain messages to Blockstream, the hacker promised to send the money back once every node was patched. Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet was skeptical, pointing out that legitimate security researchers would not typically drain a bridge and then ask to be contacted on-chain.
Source: CryptoPotato
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