Hacker who stole $611 million from Poly Network begins returning funds
On August 11, an unknown attacker who had hacked the Chinese cross‑chain protocol Poly Network the day before said he intended to return $611 million stolen in the attack. CoinDesk reports.
The attacker made first payouts totaling 1,010,100 USDC. He also sent $1.1 million in the Bitcoin-pegged BTCB, $2 million in Shiba Inu and $622,243 in the FEI stablecoin.
The hacker returned 1,000 BTC, 26,629 ETH and 119,664,866 BUSD.
The hacker embedded the statement in an Ethereum transaction sent to himself at around 07:00 MSK. In another message he wrote that he couldn’t reach Poly Network and asked for a multi-signature wallet address to return the funds.
Representatives of the project created three wallets at the attack organizer’s request.
Hope you will transfer assets to addresses below:
ETH: 0x71Fb9dB587F6d47Ac8192Cd76110E05B8fd2142f
BSC: 0xEEBb0c4a5017bEd8079B88F35528eF2c722b31fc
Polygon: 0xA4b291Ed1220310d3120f515B5B7AccaecD66F17 pic.twitter.com/mKlBQU4a1B
— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 11, 2021
The hacker added that he is already become a ‘legend’ after carrying out the largest hack in the history of DeFi and the industry at large.
Poly Network approved the analysis by cybersecurity experts from SlowMist, who named the cause of the hack an exploit in the protocol’s cross‑chain functions. Chinese firm BlockSec suggested that the attack occurred as a result of a private key leak.
Blockchain consultant Ma/ya Zehavi pointed to the underexplored Chinese DeFi sector.
My biggest take away from the Poly hack (other than we need to do more to scrutinize protocol key management) is that there’s an entire Chinese DeFi ecosystem that goes under the radar of most westerners, cuz it’s not on Ethereum or “western” L1s.
— Ma/ya Zehavi (@mayazi) August 10, 2021
“The main takeaway from the Poly hack (aside from the need to scrutinize protocol key management more closely) is that there is an entire Chinese DeFi ecosystem that goes under the radar for most Westerners, because it isn’t on Ethereum or ‘western’ L1s,” Zehavi wrote.
As noted, on an attack on the Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Polygon blockchains hit Poly Network on August 10. The total damage amounted to $611 million across various cryptocurrencies. Some of the stolen funds, for example in USDT, were blocked.
As of writing, three wallets linked to the attacker hold just under $400 million. The remaining assets have been moved, including into the Ellipsis Finance liquidity pool.
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