NEAR Intents suffers $3.8M exploit after assistance with Bitget breach

Cross-chain protocol NEAR Intents reported a security breach that resulted in the loss of $3.8 million in user funds.

In a Thursday X post, the protocol said that the incident was the result of a “bug in the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interaction with NEAR Intents smart contract.” NEAR said that it would compensate users in full for the lost funds, and the “contract-side vulnerability has been patched” to prevent similar attacks.

“The incident has been reported to law enforcement, and we are working with security and blockchain analytics partners to trace the funds and pursue recovery,” said the platform. “A detailed report will be shared publicly in the following days.”

According to an analysis by blockchain investigator ZachXBT, the funds from the incident were transferred to the KuCoin exchange and bridged to Bitcoin. At the time of publication, it was unclear who was behind the hack.

The attack followed the protocol assisting the Bitget exchange, which suffered a $388 million security breach last week. NEAR Intents reported blocking $50 million and freezing more than $500,000 in funds tied to the attack. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen speculated that North Korean hackers may have been responsible.

Related: Bitget’s $388M hack pushes Q3 crypto security losses past $1B