A hacker drained roughly $600 million in crypto by hacking the cross-chain DeFi platform Poly Network. This made Poly Network the victim of the biggest Defi hack in History.
“We are sorry to announce that #PolyNetwork was attacked on @BinanceChain @ethereum and @0xPolygon,” tweeted Poly Network today, adding, “We call on miners of affected blockchain and crypto exchanges to blacklist tokens coming from the above addresses.”
The network also asked to establish the communication with the hackers in a tweet, and requested them to “return the hacked assets”.
The attacker consecutively struck Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. The assets stolen were $273 million of Ethereum tokens, $253 million in tokens on Binance Smart Chain and $85 million in USDC on the Polygon network.
Once the hackers stole the money, they began to send it to various other cryptocurrency addresses.
The team later also identified the three addresses where the hacker transferred the stolen assets.
- Ethereum Address: 0xC8a65Fadf0e0dDAf421F28FEAb69Bf6E2E589963
- BSC Address: 0x0D6e286A7cfD25E0c01fEe9756765D8033B32C71
- 0xPolygon Address: 0x5dc3603C9D42Ff184153a8a9094a73d461663214
Crypto Comunities Response to the Poly Network Hack
The network later asked cryptocurrency exchanges to “blacklist” the tokens coming from the accounts linked with the hackers. Tether Froze about $33 million of USDT that were part of the theft, according to the Tether CTO.
Meanwhile, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said he was aware of the attack. He further added that Binance is “coordinating with all our security partners to proactively help,” but that “there are no guarantees.”
Tracking The Attacker Down
Poly Network threatened police involvement. Although it also offered the hackers the chance to “work out a solution.”
SlowMist also said in a tweet that their researchers had “grasped the attacker’s mailbox, IP, and device fingerprints” and are “tracking possible identity clues related to the Poly Network attacker.”
The firm said that the attacker’s original funds were in monero (XMR). The attacker exchanged XMR for BNB, ETH and MATIC and other tokens to fund the attack.
Slowmist’s suggestes that the attacker used Hoo when putting together the funds for the attack. This hinted at how their digital footprint was trailed at the beginning. Other crypto investigators also found details relating to other exchanges that may help to identify them.
“Based on the flows of the funds and multiple fingerprint information, it is likely a long-planned, organized, and well-prepared attack,” Slowmist wrote.
On their Blog On medium, Slowmist has Pulished a detailed steps of How The Hacker attacked the Poly Network.
Poly Network And The Hackers Comunication
Around 4:00 UTC time on Wednesday, the attacker wrote “Ready to return the fund!” in an Ethereum transaction that was sent from the PolyNetwork Exploiter address to itself. That message was followed by another one that Says: “Failed to contact the Poly. I need a secured multisig wallet from you.”
About 20 minutes later, the team behind the Poly Network responded to the exploiter address through a transaction that it is “preparing a multisig address controlled by known Poly addresses.” In a follow-up transaction, the Poly Network team identified three addresses that they want the attacker to return the funds to.
- Ethereum Address: 0x71Fb9dB587F6d47Ac8192Cd76110E05B8fd2142f
- BSC Address: 0xEEBb0c4a5017bEd8079B88F35528eF2c722b31fc
- 0xPolygon Address: 0xA4b291Ed1220310d3120f515B5B7AccaecD66F17
Also Read: The BSV blockchain Suffered a ‘Massive’ 51% Attack
Hacker’s Respons
First, the hacker had sent a transaction from one of the wallets containing the stolen funds back to the same wallet. The message inside the transation reads, “IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A BILLION HACK IF I HAD MOVED REMAINING SHITCOINS! DID I JUST SAVE THE PROJECT? NOT SO INTERESTED IN MONEY, NOW CONSIDERING RETURNING SOME TOKENS OR JUST LEAVING THEM HERE.”
Now, the Hacker has agreed to return the stolen funds back to the Poly Network. The money is currently being sent to these addresses.
So far the hackers have transferred back $1 million in USDC on the Polygon blockchain. Hacker has also returend $1.1 million in BTCB, a bitcoin-pegged token on Binance Smart Chain, as well as $2 million in the Shiba Inu ERC-20 token and $622,243 FEI USD stablecoins.
According to CipherTrace, attacks on De-fi have increased nearly three times from the whole of 2020. From the start of the year until July, DeFi-related hacks totaled $361 million.
