A major hacking episode involving Poly Network may be headed for a good ending as the hacker involved has reportedly returned more almost all $600 million worth of tokens hacked from the network. He has claimed he did it for fun and even conducted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session online. What a strange world we live in!
While cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks are often considered some of the safest ledgers around, the truth is that only the top networks are safe and the smaller ones due are susceptible to hacking attempts. In addition, the crypto stored by big companies online are often very vulnerable as well because of lack of their own security procedures.
Widely regarded as one of the biggest Decentralized Finance (DeFi) hacks of all times, the Poly Network suffered this massive hack on early Tuesday. Once the hacker had access to the DeFi network’s system, he managed to steal massive funds from Ethereum, Binance Chain and Polygon’s own network.
While the hack was damning and the Poly Network developers were forced to eat humble pie, what happened next was unexpected; the attacker(s) communicated and showed his/her willingness to return the massive cache of funds. This led to some concluding that the whole episode was orchestrated by a white hat hacker who wanted to teach the network’s team a thing or two about the importance of online security.
However, there is another point of view. According to one analyst, returning the stolen funds was perhaps the only way forward for the hacker himself. The Poly Network is a medium size network with limited userbase and therefore, it was always going to be very difficult for the hacker to cash out his bounty. Every coin is traceable on blockchain networks and they can easily be traced throughout their transaction histories. The hacker would have most definitely been caught or at least identified in the near future if he tried to cash out. This is why he/she proceeded to return the funds.
Image Source: Elliptic
He even conducted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session to show users how exactly the episode went through and how he was able to snatch that massive sum of money. He appears to be someone outside the English speaking world and is apparently using a translator. He said he did it for fun and that the “cross chain hacking is hot”. He is referring to snooping funds from multiple blockchain networks which he successfully did.
Image Source: pxhere.com
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