Hacker Has Stolen Over $ 600 Million In Crypto Coins, Now He Could Return Them

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It is estimated that over $ 600 million worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen as a result of a hack on a protocol called Poly Network. And now whoever stole it appears to be returning it, according to CNBC and Chainalysis. According to Bloomberg, this is probably one of the biggest hacks in the decentralized finance space, or DeFi.

The Poly Network is a protocol that allows people to transfer cryptocurrencies between blockchains. And due to this bridge role, stolen assets come in the form of hundreds of different token types, from Ethereum to Binances BNB to Dogecoin.

The Poly Network cites the huge amount of stolen money in a message to the hacker, which it posted on Twitter. The post begins Dear Hacker and goes on to explain how the attacker is said to be in trouble with law enforcement for robbing people.

The message may have worked. The hacker posted a series of messages (incorporating text into transactions sent to him), saying he was ready to return the stolen funds but needed a way to send them back to Poly Network. Poly Network provided addresses to send the crypto to and coins started pouring in.

At 10:00 a.m.ET on Wednesday, around $ 5 million was returned, but it appears the attacker is getting rid of lower-value cryptos first. They included a message saying they were DUMPING SHITCOINS FIRST.

Maybe they got tired of the hundreds of people begging for a Robin Hood redistribution

There have been several theories as to how the attack was carried out. A security team claims that, based on their initial analysis, the attacker was either able to sign transactions with a legitimate private key, or he was able to exploit a bug to get a message signed. Poly Network rejected this analysis, saying the attackers exploited an interaction between two contracts. Poly Network reported another search for security companies that found similar results. Chainalysis said it will release a full analysis today.

It’s likely that we won’t know what really happened until further investigation is done, and we won’t know how well the hacker actually got away with it. It is possible that the crypto community will rally to the blacklist of stolen tokens, rendering them essentially worthless, which has already been done for around $ 33 million in tokens, but it wouldn’t be so easy for the rest of the world. between them. According to The Block, the frozen holdings were USDT coins, which are controlled by a company called Tether. However, many of the other stolen coins are decentralized, which means that no entity can decide what can or cannot happen with them, and there is no promise as to what the community will decide to do. .

There is also the question of why the attacker started to return the funds. Yesterday they posted a message that said, partly not so interested in the money, now considering returning tokens or just leaving them here. Since then, they’ve posted a message saying giving the money back (or saving the world, as they say) would make it an eternal legend. But another post they posted, asking for donations from those who support their decision to return the funds, calls into question the thing not so interested in the money. Maybe they’re just returning the funds out of fear they won’t be able to use them, or they’re fed up with the hundreds of people begging for a Robin Hood redistribution.

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