$611 Million In Cryptocurrencies Stolen In Massive Hack
$611 Million in Cryptocurrencies Stolen in Massive Hack
Earlier this week, Poly Network, a protocol for exchanging cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, announced that it had been hacked and that it had suffered a loss of $611 million. In terms of “decentralized finance,” or DeFi, the hack is believed to be the largest fraud in the history of the field.
A hacker gained access to the network, resulting in the theft of assets worth $611 million.
The news was announced via Twitter, and the network urged exchanges to block all of the funds that had been taken.
We urge miners of affected blockchains and cryptocurrency exchanges to blacklist tokens originating from the addresses provided in the tweet, which also included a list of three addresses to which the assets were allegedly transferred.
Poly Network is a cryptocurrency exchange that trades tokens across various blockchains, including Etereum and Ontology, as well as the bitcoin blockchain. A coalition between the teams behind multiple blockchain platforms, including Neo, Ontology, and Switcheo, according to the publication The Block was formed to form the consortium.
In total, $273 million in Ethereum tokens, $253 million in tokens on the Binance Smart Chain, and $85 million in U.S. Dollar Coin (USDC) tokens on the Polygon network were seized, according to Cryptonews.
Actions to be taken
A thread on Poly Network's Twitter account stated, "We will take legal action and we strongly urge the hackers to return the assets."
This attack has been dubbed "the largest hack ever witnessed in the cryptocurrency space" by some.
Since the attack, Tether, a stablecoin in its own right, has managed to freeze approximately $33 million in tokens.
“We are aware of the poly.network exploit that occurred today,” the company stated. While no one has control over BSC (or ETH), we are working with all of our security partners to provide proactive assistance. There are no guarantees in this world. According to Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, "we will do everything we can."
According to The Block, the hack forced O3, a trading pool that uses the Poly Network to trade tokens between different blockchains, to suspend its cross-chain functionality as a result of the attack.
Researchers believe that a cryptography flaw was at the root of the hack, which would be unusual in other instances of hacking to have occurred. A similar attack on Poly Network, which occurred in July and resulted in the theft of $7.9 million from a bank account, could have been perpetrated by reversing the private key on Poly Network.
According to a report published by Reuters, the DeFi sector of cybercrime suffered losses totaling $474 million between January and July of this year.
In a statement to Reuters, Dave Jevans, chief executive officer of CipherTrace, said that DeFi hacks, thefts, and frauds had already surpassed the total number of DeFi crimes committed in 2020 after only eight months. “As a result, regulators around the world are paying more attention to DeFi in particular.”
Numerous DeFi applications are built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, and the industry is experiencing both growth and improvement in terms of security infrastructure. Jevans predicted that the expansion would result in an increase in crime.
The fact that DeFi crimes are increasing in number as the ecosystem grows should not be a surprise, according to him.
