Gracy Chen, CEO of the crypto exchange Bitget, reported a personal loss of approximately $80,000 due to a social engineering attack. The attackers impersonated journalists by compromising the X account of a known media outlet to gain her trust.
Chen linked the incident to the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking collective, citing consistent behavioral patterns. This attack occurred alongside a major security breach at Bitget, where approximately $387.5 million was stolen from the exchange's wallets.
The institutional breach involved the use of spoofed transaction data to redirect funds rather than the compromise of private keys. While the initial estimate for the exchange theft was $351.6 million, the figure was later revised upward to $387.5 million.
Bitget maintains a User Protection Fund valued at over $464 million to cover user losses, but this fund does not extend to the CEO's personal assets. Chen noted that the tactics used against her mirror strategies previously deployed against other exchanges, such as Bybit.
