Page 12 - IAV Digital Magazine #528

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Hackers have stolen some $600m (£433m) in what appears to be one the largest cryptocur- rency heists ever.
Blockchain site Poly Network said hackers had exploited a vul- nerability in its system and taken thousands of dig- ital tokens such as Ether.
In a letter posted on Twitter, it urged the thieves to "establish communication and return the hacked assets".
Hours after the hack, the attack- er started return- ing the funds - first in small amounts and then in millions.
They started sending back small transfers totalling a few dollars to the online wallets controlled by Poly - but then began making much larger deposits, totalling
hun-
dreds of millions.
In scale, the hack is on par with huge recent breaches at exchanges such as Coincheck and Mt Gox.
In its letter Poly Network said: "The amount of money you have hacked is one of the biggest in defi [decentralised finance] history.
"Law enforce- ment in any country will regard this as a major economic crime and you
will
be pursued.
"The money you stole are from tens of thou- sands of crypto community mem- bers, hence the people."
Poly Network said a preliminary investigation found a hacker exploited a "vul- nerability between contract calls".
It urged various exchanges to block deposits of the coins, after millions of dollars in tokens were
trans-
ferred to sepa- rate cryptocurren- cy wallets.
About $267m of Ether currency has been taken, $252m of Binance coins and roughly $85 million in USDC tokens.
Changpeng Zhao, chief exec- utive of Binance, said his firm was aware of the hack, but added there was only so much he could do.
He said the group was "co-
ordi-
nating with all our security partners to proactively help".
"There are no guarantees," he added.
Poly Network is a decentralised finance - or Defi - provider, which allows users to transfer tokens tied to one blockchain to a different network.
Cryptocurrency systems such as Ether and Binance were developed inde- pendently, so
have struggled to work in conjunc- tion with each other.
Losses from fraud in the Defi sector hit an all- time high of $474m in the first seven months of the year, a report from research company CipherTrace said on Tuesday.
But losses from crime in the over- all cryptocurrency market dropped sharply to $681m, com- pared to $1.9bn for the whole of 2020 and $4.5bn in 2019.
Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Defi lender Blockchain Credit Partners and two of its top execu- tives for raising $30m through allegedly fraudu- lent offerings.
The case is the SEC's first involv- ing securities in the Defi space.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Hackers Steal $600m In Major Cryptocurrency Heist