Chainalysis Used AI to Trace the $387M Bitget Hack Back to North Korea
The firm says the Sept. 24 breach pushed North Korea's 2026 crypto haul past $1 billion, and detailed how it used in-house AI to trace the stolen funds across four blockchains in a race against the attackers.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has linked the September 24 hack of crypto exchange Bitget to North Korean state-sponsored actors, revealing that approximately $387 million was stolen in the breach. According to Chainalysis, the attack pushed North Korea's total crypto theft for 2026 past the $1 billion mark. The firm detailed how it deployed proprietary artificial intelligence tools to trace the stolen funds across four separate blockchains in an effort to track the assets before attackers could launder or obscure them.
North Korea has maintained a long-documented history of targeting cryptocurrency platforms to fund state operations, with groups such as the Lazarus Group linked to some of the largest thefts in the industry's history. The scale and speed of the Bitget breach is consistent with tactics previously attributed to North Korean hackers, who have grown increasingly sophisticated in their ability to move stolen assets rapidly across multiple networks and protocols to evade detection.
The incident underscores the growing role of AI-assisted analytics in blockchain security, as the race between investigators and attackers continues to intensify. Exchanges and custodial platforms face mounting pressure to strengthen on-chain monitoring and incident response capabilities, particularly as state-level threat actors demonstrate greater technical proficiency.
Industry observers will be watching whether any portion of the stolen funds can be frozen or recovered through coordination with exchanges and law enforcement agencies, and how Bitget responds to address security vulnerabilities exposed by the attack.
Source: Decrypt
