Hacker Steals Over Half a Billion from Crypto Platform
Poly Network, a Chinese-based cryptocurrency decentralized finance platform, recently announced an attack on its infrastructure. According to Poly Network, the attack abused a vulnerability and allowed a bad actor to steal a mind-boggling $600 million in crypto from the platform.
The company came forward with an official statement on Wednesday, August 11, informing the public that the hack took place and the hacker responsible for the attack abused a function known as "_executeCrossChainTx". The statement claims that this specific function is in charge of between-contract calls and is an inseparable part of communication between the different blockchains.
The statement, as quoted by ThreatPost, further informs that the hacker fed data into the system through this function, changing the "keeper of the EthCrossChainData contract". It's not too clear how this sort of highly technical information is of any use to anyone who is just a regular user on the platform.
The hack involved the theft and reassignment of crypto tokens worth over $600 million. In a curious turn of events, after Poly Network pleaded the hacker to get in touch with them so they can "work out a solution", the entity responsible for the attack actually got back to Poly Network and returned nearly half the illegally appropriated money in several transactions.
The hacker allegedly stated he was "not very interested in money" and later published a sort of a Q&A session with himself, explaining how and why he executed the attack.
It seems even though he directly stole the money instead of notifying the platform of the vulnerability, the hacker still believes he is one of the good guys, given the tone of his interview with himself. Whether the remainder of the stolen crypto tokens will also make their way back to their original owners remains to be seen.
This incident marks the single largest monetary value crypto hack in history so far. The $600 million crypto heist is ahead of the $530 million stolen in a hacker attack on a Japanese crypto exchange.
