Earlier this week (August 10), hackers undertook a daring digital heist, making off with £420 million ($610 million) in cryptocurrency before it became practically unusable.
As reported by PC Gamer, the theft saw the perpetrators exploiting a vulnerability in Poly Network, a platform that enables transactions between different blockchains. While they’re not revealing how the hackers did it, Poly Network has called it “the biggest DeFi heist ever,” as they managed to manipulate transactions and divert millions of dollars of various cryptocurrencies to three separate digital wallets.
However, once the theft had occurred, Poly Network took to Twitter to ask them to return the cryptocurrency, saying how “law enforcement in any country will regard this as a major economic crime, and you will be pursued.”
— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 10, 2021
They then shared the addresses of the three digital wallets online, asking miners and crypto exchanges to blacklist them. With this information made public, the hackers couldn’t actually use any of their loot because everyone would know it was stolen.
The hacker, known as Mr. White Hat, has since worked with the Poly Network to return the various cryptocurrency with $342 million already handed back.
Since the incident, Poly Network has laid out what they plan to do next. “With the aim of ensuring complete, safe, and smooth asset recovery, we would like to briefly share Poly Network’s roadmap for resuming operations and fully recovering user assets in the next phase,” starts the thread.
With the aim of ensuring complete, safe, and smooth asset recovery, we would like to briefly share #PolyNetwork 's roadmap for resuming operations and fully recovering user assets in the next phase.
— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 13, 2021
Elsewhere the company shared that it is currently “working with multiple security & audit groups to go over the code. We also plan a global bounty program to encourage more security agencies to participate in the audit of Poly Network’s core functions.”
They went on to say how “this incident does not just concern all the Poly Network users, community participants, and partners, but also greatly affects the confidence of society at large in the crypto industry.”
In other news, a Fallout 4 mod adds grab attacks to the game.
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