Hackers return US$260 million after massive cryptocurrency heist
- The amount is more than a third of the US$613 million in digital coins stolen from finance platform Poly Network in one of the biggest such thefts in history
- The purported hacker says they did it ‘for fun’ and wanted to ‘expose the vulnerability’ involved before others could exploit it
Hackers behind one of the biggest ever cryptocurrency heists have returned more than a third of US$613 million in digital coins they stole, the company at the centre of the hack said on Wednesday.
Poly Network, a decentralised finance platform that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions, said on Twitter that US$260 million of the stolen funds had been returned but that US$353 million was outstanding.
The company, which allows users to swap tokens across different blockchains, said on Tuesday it had been hacked and urged the culprits to return the stolen funds, threatening legal action.
The hackers exploited a vulnerability in the digital contracts Poly Network uses to move assets between different blockchains, according to blockchain forensics company Chainalysis.
A person claiming to have perpetrated the hack said they did it “for fun” and wanted to “expose the vulnerability” before others could exploit it, according to digital messages shared by Elliptic, a crypto tracking firm, and Chainalysis.