In what looks to be one of the greatest cryptocurrency heists ever, hackers have plundered nearly $600m (£433m). After exploiting a loophole in its system, they stole thousands of digital tokens such as Ether from Poly Network.
The Grand Heist
On Twitter, it asked the criminals to “establish communication and return the hacked assets”. In scale, Coincheck and Mt Gox have both lately experienced massive hacks. According to Poly Network’s letter, this is the largest sum of money ever hacked in the history of decentralised finance.
“Law enforcement in any country will regard this as a major economic crime. The money you stole is from tens of thousands of crypto community members, hence the people.”
‘We lost our life savings in a cryptocurrency scam.’
Hacker Exploits Vulnerability
According to the EU, bitcoin transactions are easily trackable. Poly Network claimed a hacker exploited a “vulnerability between contract calls” in a preliminary probe. Moreover, moving millions of dollars in tokens to different cryptocurrency wallets encouraged several exchanges to bank deposits of the currencies.
They stole about $267 million in Ether, $252 million in Binance coins, and $85 million in USDC tokens.
Binance Comments
Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of Binance, said that his company was aware of the breach but claimed there was only so much he could do. Additionally, he stated the group was “coordinating with all our security partners to help proactively”.
“There are no guarantees,” he further added.
