Hackers returned half of the $611 million stolen cryptocurrency

The hacker behind The biggest robbery in cryptocurrency history According to reports, nearly half of the $611 million stolen has been returned.

Poly Network, a platform that facilitates cryptocurrency transactions including Bitcoin, announced earlier this week that it had been hacked, causing millions of dollars in losses.

“We call on the miners of the affected blockchain and crypto exchanges to blacklist the tokens from the aforementioned addresses,” the network tweeted on Tuesday, and provided three addresses indicating that assets have been transferred to these address. It added: “We will take legal action and urge hackers to return their assets.”

The network addresses hackers in an open letter Twitter The next day, he wrote: “Dear hacker…we want to establish communication with you and urge you to return the hacked assets. The amount of your hacked assets is the largest in defi [decentralized finance] history. The law enforcement agencies of any country will treat this as a major economic crime and you will be pursued. It is very unwise for you to make any transactions. You should talk to us to find a solution. “

According to reports, the hacker subsequently posted a message embedded in an Ethereum transaction sent by an account under his control, promising to return the funds and claiming that he was “not very interested in money”.

“I am_not_ very interested in money,” the hacker allegedly wrote in a screenshot of the three-page question-and-answer session. Tom Robinson was the co-founder of the crypto tracking company Elliptic. “I know it hurts when people are attacked, but shouldn’t they learn something from these hackers?”

Hackers are believed to have exploited vulnerabilities in Poly Network’s digital contracts used to move assets between different blockchains, adding that they did so “for fun” and wanted to “expose” Poly Network software before others Vulnerabilities.

Poly Network exchanges tokens on different blockchains, including Ethereum and Ontology, as well as Bitcoin’s blockchain.

On Wednesday, Poly Network announced that it had returned $260 million of stolen funds, but there was still $353 million outstanding. On Thursday, the network issued an update stating that it has received $342 million in refunds so far.

“The assets of USD 342 million (as of 08:18:29 AM + UTC on August 12) have been returned,” Poly Networks said in a statement. tweet Earlier today. Of the returned assets, 4.6 million USD is considered to be in Ethereum, 252 million USD is in BSC, and 85 million USD is in polygon. According to the platform, the remaining $268 million on Ethereum has not yet been returned.

In an embedded message shared from a hacker account, the person claimed to spend all night searching for exploitable vulnerabilities and decided to take away millions of dollars in cryptocurrency to prove his point.

Robinson said: “They either just want to steal assets, or expose vulnerabilities like white hat hackers to help Poly Network become stronger and more secure.” British Broadcasting CorporationHe added: “I want to know if this hacker stole the funds, realize how much publicity and attention they get, realize that they will be monitored wherever they transfer the funds, and decide to return it.”

The Elliptic co-founder told Reuters that the decision to return the funds may be due to the difficulty of large-scale laundering of stolen cryptocurrencies.

Robinson said: “Even if you can steal encrypted assets, it is extremely difficult to launder money and cash because of the transparency of the blockchain and the widespread use of blockchain analysis by financial institutions.”

So far, the identity of the hacker has not been determined.

Weekly newspaper Poly Network has been contacted for comments.