Hacker returns $258 million to Poly Network after major crypto theft
A hacker has stolen $600 million worth of cryptocurrency from crypto platform Poly Network. This makes it one of the biggest hacks ever in the decentralized finance world. The hacker has started returning the tokens and has since returned $258 million to Poly Network.
Poly Network Decentralized Cryptocurrency Platform made the hack public on his Twitter page. The platform was attacked via Ethereum, the Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon. The hacker made use of a vulnerability between contract calls. It is estimated that $600 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen, Bloomberg and Reuters, among others, reported. These include $273 million in Ethereum tokens, $253 million in tokens on the Binance Smart Chain and $85 million in USDC tokens on the Polygon network. It would thus have been one of the greatest DeFi hacks of all time.
The stolen coins were housed in three different addresses, according to Poly Network. The maker of stablecoin Tether, which tracks the dollar rate, froze $33 million worth of Tether coins following the news, crypto exchange chief technical officer Bitfinex reported on Twitter. The CEO of crypto exchange Binance also indicated ‘proactively help’.
Poly Network’s message to the perpetrator. Image via Twitter
Poly Network called in the perpetrator on Wednesday a tweet to return the stolen cryptocurrency. “The amount of money you’ve hacked is the largest in DeFi history. Law enforcement officers in every country will consider this a major economic crime and will be after you,” the platform said. Poly Network therefore asks the perpetrator to contact the platform in order to ‘come to a solution’.
The message may have helped. Among other things, the hacker said on Wednesday that he or she could not get in touch with Poly, and needs an address to return stolen coins to. Poly Network has those addresses published on Twitter and the hacker has since started returning stolen tokens. According to cryptoanalysis company Elliptic the perpetrator has since returned about 258 million dollars to the crypto platform.
The hacker communicates via transaction messages. The perpetrator would have answered some questions about the hack, among other things, writes Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson on Twitter. The perpetrator claims, among other things, that he or she placed the tokens in their own wallets after discovering the vulnerability in order to ‘keep them safe’. Poly Network has not yet responded to these messages from the perpetrator.
Some transaction messages from the perpetrator