Hackers Give Back Half Of $600m In Stolen Crypto Currencies

Hackers successfully exploited a vulnerability to steal more than $600 million in crypto currency tokens from blockchain-based platform Poly Network, making this the largest hack in recorded history. 

According to blockchain forensics company Chainalysis, they found a weakness a vulnerability in the digital contracts Poly Network uses to move assets between different blockchains. Now, in an unusual twist the hackers have returned a large amount of the stolen funds. 

This twist came after a slew of crypto-currency experts and businesses pledged to track the hacker’s crypto activity on the blockchain, but the hackers' identity and how exactly funds were stolen, remain unknown.  The hackers were able to change the “keeper role” of a blockchain contract, allowing them to make any transaction, such as a withdrawal. The vulnerability was due to a keeper’s private key being leaked. 

Poly Network, a decentralised finance platform that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions, confirmed that they have “the attacker’s mailbox, IP and device fingerprints through on-chain and off-chain tracking.” The firm confirmed the attack by issuing a statement on Twitter in which they urged the hackers to ‘return the hacked assets’. Surprisingly, the request seems to have worked. Hackers have since been in contact and have returned almost half of the stolen assets. 

The hackers sent a message to Poly Network embedded in a crypto-currency transaction saying they were “ready to return” the funds. Poly Network responded requesting the money be sent to three crypto addresses.

One of the hackers has supposedly claimed that they carried out the attack “for fun” and wanted to “expose the vulnerability” before others could exploit it, according to digital messages shared by Elliptic, a crypto identity tracking firm. It was “always the plan” to return the tokens, the purported hacker wrote, adding: “I am not very interested in money.”

According to a spokesman for Elliptic, the decision to return the money could have been prompted by the difficulties of laundering stolen crypto on such a large scale.

“Even if you can steal crypto-assets, laundering them and cashing out is extremely difficult, due to the transparency of the blockchain and the broad use of blockchain analytics by financial institutions,” said  Elliptic's co-founder, Tom Robinson.

The Poly Network attack comes as losses from theft, hacks and fraud related to decentralised finance (DeFi) hit an all-time high.In the first half of 2021, DeFi-related thefts totaled $361 million, a nearly three-fold increase compared with the entirety of 2020, according to data from crypto currency compliance company CipherTrace.

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