Poly Network hacker returns $258M, conducts AMA on how it went down

The Poly Network hacker has now returned $258 million to the cross-chain DeFi protocol and conducted a question and answer session detailing how the initial hack went down. In what is being described as the largest DeFi hack to date, the Poly Network suffered a $612 million exploit on Aug. 10 which saw the hacker steal assets from Ethereum, Binance Chain and the Polygon Network.

Tom Robinson, the chief scientist at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic told Forbes on Aug. 11 that the hacker has now returned roughly $258 million worth of funds to Poly so far — with $342 million yet to be returned. The attacker stated their willingness to return the stolen funds on multiple occasions, which has led to suggestions that it may have been a white hat hack to teach Poly an expensive lesson about its security flaws.

However, that view wasn’t necessarily shared by Robinson who stated that the returning of funds “demonstrates that even if you can steal crypto-assets, laundering them and cashing out is extremely difficult due to the transparency of the blockchain.” The hacker has conducted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) using embedded messages in Ethereum transactions, and while they appear to be a non-native English speaker, what’s lost in translation is their grand plan.

When asked why they were hacking and why the Poly protocol, in particular, the hacker states “for fun” and because “cross-chain hacking is hot.”

Despite such answers, they then proceed to claim the hack was conducted for noble causes, and that they have since been transferring tokens between addresses only to keep them safe: “When spotting the bug, I had a mixed feeling. Ask yourself what to do had you facing so much fortune. Asking the project team politely so that they can fix it? Anyone could be the traitor given one billion. I can trust nobody! The only solution I can come up with is saving it in a trusted account.”

Poly Network hacker returns $258M, conducts AMA on how it went down, Cointelegraph, Aug 12