The hacker behind a $610 million attack, one of the largest cryptocurrency heists to date on the cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Poly Network has returned almost all of the stolen funds.
Poly Network is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions with a focus on allowing users to transfer or swap tokens across different blockchains.
According to a Thursday update from Poly Network on the incident, all of the $610 million in cash stolen through an exploit on Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Ethereum violated a “vulnerability between contract calls” have now been transferred to a multisig wallet held by the project and the hacker. The only remaining tokens are around $33 million in Tether (USDT), which were frozen as soon as the hack was discovered.
Through encoded messages in Ethereum transactions, the hacker communicated with the Poly Network team and others. They claimed to have done the breach “for fun” because “cross-chain hacking is hot,” but it appears they had no plans to move the funds after successfully taking them.
The biggest hack in decentralized finance appears to be coming to an end now that the remaining funds, with the exception of the frozen USDT, have been refunded.