For Fun; Hackers return $600mn worth cryptocurrency stolen from Poly Network

By Arya M Nair, Official Reporter
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Poly Network
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Poly Network, the cryptocurrency platform targeted under the largest-ever digital coin heist earlier this week by hackers has announced that they had received nearly all of the $610 million stolen from them.

Following the return of the funds, the Decentralized Finance (DeFi platform), which aims to connect multiple blockchains so that they may function together, referred to the hacker as a “white hat,” referring to ethical hackers who normally try to expose cyber vulnerabilities.

The tokens were transferred to a multi-signature wallet controlled by both the platform and the hacker, according to Poly Network, which facilitates peer-to-peer token transactions. Poly Network is a platform for decentralized finance, which is a broad term that refers to a range of financial applications based on blockchain technology that aims to eliminate intermediaries like brokerages and exchanges.

“The repayment process has not yet been completed. To ensure the safe recovery of user assets, we hope to maintain communication with Mr. White Hat and convey accurate information to the public,” said Poly Network on Twitter.

Later this week, Poly Network, which also allows users to transfer or swap tokens across different blockchains, said it had been hit by the cyberheist, urging the culprits to return the stolen funds. Once the hackers stole the money, they began to send it to various other cryptocurrency addresses.

The hackers said that they had perpetrated the attack “for fun” and wanted to “expose the vulnerability” before others could exploit it and that it was “always” the plan to return the tokens. 

Poly Network advised cryptocurrency exchanges to “blacklist tokens” coming from the hackers’ addresses. According to sources, the yet-unidentified hacker or hackers appeared to have taken advantage of a vulnerability in the digital contracts Poly Network uses to transfer funds across blockchains.

Related: Largest crypto heist in history; Hackers stole $600mn from Poly Network

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