Poly Network pleads for hackers to return assets after $611 million crypto heist — and they start to do so - UPDATE: Hacker explains it was for the lulz

Mike Murphy
Market Watch
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 12:37 UTC

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Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Ether was reportedly stolen in the hack.

Hack of DeFi platform could be one of the largest crypto heists ever.

Hackers who stole more than $600 million in cryptocurrency from a protocol known as Poly Network have returned more than half of that sum, after Poly Network pleaded with the culprits to return their haul Tuesday.

"Dear hacker," an open letter from Poly Network read. "The amount of money you have hacked is one of the biggest in defi history. Law enforcement in any country will regard this as a major economic crime and you will be pursued. ... The money you stole are from tens of thousands of crypto community members, hence the people.

"You should talk to us to work out a solution," it concluded.

On Wednesday, the hackers sent a message to Poly Network saying they were "ready to return" the funds, according to CNBC. Poly Network replied with three crypto addresses for the money.

Poly Network is a decentralized-finance (DeFi) platform that operates on the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. It said Tuesday that a preliminary investigation found a vulnerability between contract calls, and denied rumors that the exploit was caused by a single keeper.

Poly Network said its team traced the stolen assets to three addresses, and asked token issuers to blacklist tokens coming from those addresses.

Tether Chief Technology Officer Paolo Ardoino tweeted that the stablecoin company froze $33 million worth of its tokens that were taken in the hack.

The heist, estimated at about $611 million in various crypto assets, including hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Ether ETHUSD, -2.97% and Binance coins, would rank as among the largest in crypto history.

Last week, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler called for new regulations on cryptocurrency and DeFi, warning that the digital-asset class is "rife with fraud, scams and abuses."

Comment: RT reports:

In an improvised Q&A session held through transaction notes, the attacker claimed they wanted to expose a vulnerability in the platform's contract calls to "beat any insiders or hackers." Calling the Poly Network a "decent system," the hacker explained that they did not want to divulge the "bug" to a project team because "anyone could be the traitor."

They claimed that "saving" the assets in a secure account was the "only solution." In subsequent messages, the attacker said that they were angry at the network for making them a scapegoat before they had a chance to explain themselves, and insisted that they had no intention to launder the coins. "That's always the plan! I'm not very interested in money," the attacker said, claiming they perpetrated the hack "for fun."

Claiming that their motivation was "to do something cool but not harmful," the hacker raised even more eyebrows by asking for donations in support of his stunt.

So far, the attacker has racked up around $3,500 - a far cry from the $613 million worth of tokens snatched from the platform.

Poly Network is a transnational decentralized finance platform that operates on the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains, connecting them in one cyber-spot so that they can cut out intermediaries, thus making coin transfers easier and cheaper.

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