Shocking reversal! Hackers return nearly half of their assets after stealing $600 million in cryptocurrency

On Tuesday, Poly Network announced that it has been attacked, assets have been transferred to hackers, and issued a Twitter statement:

Important notice: We regret to announce that #PolyNetwork has been attacked by @BinanceChain, @ethereum and @0xPolygon

The assets have been transferred to the following address of the hacker:

ETH：0xC8a65Fadf0e0dDAf421F28FEAb69Bf6E2E589963

And BSC: 0x0D6e286A7cfD25E0c01fEe9756765D8037.B32

Poly Network stated that hackers took advantage of a loophole in its system and stole thousands of digital tokens, including Ethereum, with a total value of approximately US$610 million.

This may be one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in history, but it was such a theft that was considered "long-term planned, organized and prepared" by the blockchain ecosystem security company Slow Mist, but it turned out to be a shocking reversal yesterday. .

After the Poly Network issued a notice to the hackers asking them to "establish contact and return the stolen assets" and warn them that they would be hunted down by law enforcement agencies in various countries, the hackers began to return some of the cryptocurrency they had stolen.

They sent a message embedded in a cryptocurrency transaction to Poly Network, stating that they were "ready to return" the funds. Poly Network responded, asking the hackers to send these cryptocurrencies to three addresses.

As of 11 AM EST on Wednesday (23 PM Beijing time on Wednesday), approximately US$260 million worth of cryptocurrency has been returned to Poly Network addresses, including US$256 million BSC, US$1 million from Pliygon, and $3.3 million from Ethereum.

The company attributed the attack to an exploited vulnerability related to contract invocations, and Poly Network added that the vulnerability was “not caused by a rumored single administrator.”

Tom Robinson, Chief Scientist of Blockchain Analysis Company Elliptic, said:

"I think this shows that due to the transparency of the blockchain and the use of blockchain analysis, even if you can steal encrypted assets, money laundering and monetization is extremely difficult."

"In this case, the hacker concluded that the safest option is to return the stolen assets."

Poly Network urges cryptocurrency exchanges to "blacklist" tokens from addresses related to hackers.

According to the issuer of Tether, the Tether worth about 33 million U.S. dollars stolen by hackers has been frozen.