Hackers Steal $610 Million in Largest Theft in the History of Cryptocurrency
The vulnerability of Polygon Network, a platform that aims to connect various blockchains in order for them to collaborate, cost them more than $600 million.
Poly Network announced the incident on Twitter, requesting contact with the hackers and pleading with them to “restore the hacked assets.” According to the stablecoin’s issuer, around $33 million in Tether has been frozen as a result of the heist.
The CEO of Binance, world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Changpeng Zhao, stated that he was aware of the hack. Binance said it “coordinating with all our security partners to provide proactive assistance,” he said, but “there are no assurances.”
“We will pursue legal action against the hackers and ask them to return the assets,” Poly Network stated on Twitter.
SlowMist stated in a tweet that their experts have “captured the attacker’s mailbox, IP address, and device fingerprints” and are “investigating probable identification clues associated with the Poly Network perpetrator.”
The experts determined that the theft was “likely the result of a lengthy, organized, and planned attack.”
DeFi has become into a primary target for attackers.
Between January and July, DeFi-related attacks reached $361 million — roughly three times the sum for all of 2020, according to cryptocurrency compliance firm CipherTrace.
Fraud with DeFi is also on the rise. They accounted for 54% of overall crypto fraud volume in the first seven months of the year, up from 3% in the entire previous year.
A blockchain serves as the foundation for multiple cryptocurrencies. Each digital coin has its own blockchain, which is distinct from the others. Poly Network asserts it can integrate these disparate blockchains.
Poly Network is a decentralized platform for money. DeFi is an umbrella word that refers to financial applications built on blockchain technology that aim to eliminate middlemen such as brokers and exchanges. As a result, it is said to as decentralized.
“The amount of money you hacked is the largest in the history of defi,” Poly Network added in another tweet.
The hackers began sending the stolen funds to a variety of other bitcoin accounts. According to SlowMist researchers a total of more than $610 million in cryptocurrencies was transferred to three distinct addresses.
Poly Network advised cryptocurrency exchanges to “blacklist tokens” originating from the hackers’ addresses.
