On late Tuesday, the cryptocurrency cross-chain platform Poly Network disclosed a hacking incident, where over $600 million worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen.
The lost funds were transferred to a wallet, which the Poly Network mentioned and asked everyone not to accept funds coming from it. With $600 million and more to find, this incident marks one of the largest hacks in cryptocurrency history.
The Biggest Cryptocurrency Hack in History
One of the primary properties of cryptocurrencies that made people fall in love with is the irreversibility. A transaction once recorded on blockchain cannot be reversed, and the only way to correct is to make another similar transaction backward, by the concerned participants.
This is unlikely in terms of a hack, as the malicious attacker doesn’t intend to repay the stolen funds. And those were lost forever! Just like in the case of Poly Network, which was announced to be hacked on late Tuesday.
Important Notice:
We are sorry to announce that #PolyNetwork was attacked on @BinanceChain @ethereum and @0xPolygon Assets had been transferred to hacker's following addresses:
ETH: 0xC8a65Fadf0e0dDAf421F28FEAb69Bf6E2E589963
BSC: 0x0D6e286A7cfD25E0c01fEe9756765D8033B32C71— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 10, 2021
As per its tweet, the project was revealed to be attacked by someone unknown, and lost over $600 million worth of cryptocurrencies in this deal! Poly Network is a cross-chain platform, where it provides blockchain interoperability, which means letting various blockchains of similar infrastructure communicate and collaborate.
This led coins from other involved projects to be stolen too. These include $264 million stolen on Ethereum and $250 million from the Binance Smart Chain aside from the $85 million of Polygon’s own.
The hacker has deposited $USDC and $DAI to the curve.
ETH:0xf8B5c45c6388c9Ee12546061786026aAeaa4b682We appeal token issuers to blacklist assets coming from the above address. @MakerDAO @circlepay
— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 10, 2021
Poly Network noted the cause of this hack was a vulnerability between contract calls and not the compromised keeper’s key which is being rumored online.
Yet, the project immediately posted on Twitter to let people know, and also mentioned the hacker’s wallet address, to which the stolen funds were transferred.
It then asked various Defi, miners, and Cryptocurrency exchanges to block funds coming from the hacker’s wallet, so they cannot liquidate them and cash out profits. This means the funds stolen will be lost ultimately until they’re whitelisted.