On the evening of August 10, the largest hack in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem occurred. The hacker was able to withdraw $ 611 million worth of tokens from the Poly Network project.
The Poly Network project allows the exchange of tokens and cryptocurrencies between various blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ontology. The project was launched as part of an alliance between the developers of Neo, Ontology and Switcheo.
— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 10, 2021
According to The Block researcher Igor Igamberdiev, the hack is related to cryptography. Apparently, the hacker gained access to one of the keys as part of multiple signatures. And that was enough to get access to users’ funds.
Analysts at BlockSec believe that the hacker either gained access to the key to sign transactions between blockchains, or discovered a vulnerability in the signature process in Poly Chain smart contracts, which allowed him to generate his own transactions.
The hacker withdrew $ 273 million in Ethereum tokens, $ 253 million in Binance Smart Chain tokens, and $ 85 million in USDC stablecoins on the Polygon network. Immediately after the attack, Tether blocked $ 33 million of stolen USDT. But the developers of BUSD and USDC were unable to block the stolen tokens.
At the same time, the attacker himself went to the contact in the signatures to transactions on the Ethereum network. He stated that he could steal a billion in Shitcoins, but he is not too interested in the money. Therefore, he decided to return the stolen funds. However, the hacker was unable to contact Poly Network representatives:
“Couldn’t contact anyone from Poly. I need a secure multi-signature wallet. I already became a legend when I stole such a fortune. And when I return the funds, I will become an eternal legend. Decision is made”.
Blockchain security company SlowMist said it had the hacker’s data – his IP address, email address, and a fingerprint from the device. According to the company, to carry out the hacking, the hacker used his own funds in XMR, which he exchanged for BNB, ETH and MATIC.
In recent months, hackers have switched to hacking DeFi projects. Since the beginning of the year, there have been more than 20 attacks on decentralized projects, and the amount of losses exceeded $ 310 million. Taking into account the hacking of Poly Network, the volume of stolen funds is already approaching $ 1 billion.
Previously, hackers gained access to several Popsicle Finance liquidity pools and withdrew $ 20 million in assets.
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