The biggest DeFi hack; $611 million!

How many of us know about hacking? 😄 I think most of us know about it well because we are in crypto  world already and as a crypto user this is normal for us to  have idea about hacking news. So what is the first thought that comes to your mind when you hear about hacking? Of course, hacking indicates that we stole money in an illegal way. Yes, your thought is right. 😄 So did you hear about Poly Network hacking issue which happen almost one week ago? No, I should say that the biggest hack in  DeFi till now because the last largest crypto currency hack was $530 million that was hacked in January 2018.  But this  Poly network hack broke the record because the total hacked amount from Polynetwork was $611 Million. 

Some of you may be confused what is Poly network again? Well, polynetwork is a DeFi platform from where you can swap different kinds of token from different  blockchain with less fees and fast transactions. This poly network was created just to reduce the scalability of the ETH network due to it’s high gas fee. Anyway, that is another topic so leave it. 

So do you know the amount hacked was from different networks such as ETH, BSC and Poly? According to the poly network team, the amount hacked from different networks was  from ETH network around $264.8 million crypto, From BSC it was  $250.8 Million crypto and from Polygon it was $85 Million worth crypto. 

This was the official announcement of hacking news from the Poly team: 

https://twitter.com/PolyNetwork2/status/1425073987164381196?s=20

But an interesting thing happened after the hack because the hacker started to return the hacked funds from Poly network. After one day of the hack, a transaction was sent from the hacker that  He will refund  the  full amount of the poly network within time. But why did the  hacker make this decision to return the funds? Because we all know this is not easy to hack a network like this and the cost is high too. Well, there is a reason behind this too. After the hack, blockchain security firm Slowmist claimed that they have traced the IP address and email address of the hacker from some source. Also they claimed that for the attack funds the hacker used the Hoo exchange to swap some coins.

Also an interesting thing is that some of the hacker wallet addresses that were used to transfer stolen funds from Poly network are connected with 3 exchanges. Those exchanges are Binance, Okex and FTX. This is how the hacker got stuck with the stolen funds because if he did not agree to return the funds then he would get a case from Police about money laundering. So how will the security team identify him? This is easy because the exchange team will reveal his or her KYC that was submitted on the exchange. 

So finally after much drama the hacker starts to return all the hacked funds to the poly team. The Poly team offered  the hacker a reward of $500000 to return the funds but the hacker  rejected that and he said he has no aim to have money. Later, Poly team called and renamed the hacker as “White hacker”.

This hacking still indicates to us still that before entry on crypto we should learn how to secure our money. If not we learn this, then our funds might end up like this someday. Those users were lucky that the poly team was able to refund  or they would end up with zero as the token was stolen from those accounts that deposited  more than $900. 

What is your view about hacking?

Cheers!