$600m Stolen in One of The Biggest Cryptocurrency Attacks
One of the largest cryptocurrency heists ever recorded saw hackers steal a staggering $600 million as a consequence of exploiting vulnerability in blockchain site Poly Network.
The crypto industry is elevating Decentralized Finance – Defi, for short – to reproduce financial products without involving third parties. Poly Network is also a decentralized finance platform giving the ability for users to transfer tokens from one blockchain to a different network.
Along with the popularity and investments of Defi also came new hacks and scams. In a recent attack, the hackers stole thousands of digital tokens which prompted a post on twitter from Poly Network asking the hacked assets to be returned. The post regarded the crime of huge magnitude and offered the hackers to approach a solution.
“The amount of money you hacked is the biggest in defi history. Law enforcement in any country will
regard this as a major economic crime and you will be pursued.
It is very unwise for you to do any further transactions. The money you stole is from tens of thousands of crypto community members, hence the people,” said the twitter post.
Just a few hours after the attack saw the hackers return the stolen funds. Initial returns to the online wallets of Poly Network were relatively small but quickly turned into hundreds of millions.
“The hack is on par with huge recent breaches at exchanges such as Coincheck and Mt Gox,” wrote BBC.
Upon preliminary investigation conducted by Poly Network, it was revealed that hackers exploited “vulnerability between contract calls”.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also tweeted and acknowledged the attack and the damage it may cause. The tweet also stated that they are doing all they can, albeit there are no guarantees. It is reported that the digital tokens accounted for $267m of Ether currency, $252m of Binance coins, and about $85m in USDC coins.
The transfer of tokens with millions of dollars in value to different cryptocurrency wallets saw Poly Network ask exchanges to block deposits of the coin.
Defi sector is still relatively new but already has seen some major hits. A report from research company CipherTrace informed that the first seven months of the year had the highest recorded losses from fraud, totaling $474m while losses from crime plummeted significantly to $681m as compared to 2020’s numbers of a mammoth $1.9bn and $4.5bn in 2019.
