Crypto platform Poly Network rewards hacker with $500,000 ‘bug bounty’

HONG KONG, Aug 13 (Reuters) – Poly Community, the cryptocurrency platform which misplaced $610 million in a hack earlier this week, confirmed on Friday it had supplied the hacker or hackers a $500,000 “bug bounty”.

In an announcement it thanked the hacker – who it dubbed a “white hat”, sector jargon for an moral hacker who usually goals to show cyber vulnerabilities – who had returned the majority of the funds for “serving to us enhance Poly Community’s safety”.

The community additionally mentioned it hoped “Mr. White Hat” would contribute to the blockchain sector’s continued improvement upon accepting the $500,000 reward, which it had supplied as a part of negotiations across the return of the digital cash.

The assertion didn’t specify the shape through which it might pay the $500,000. It mentioned the hacker had responded to the provide however didn’t say if it was accepted.

On Thursday digital messages shared on Twitter by Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of crypto monitoring agency Elliptic, confirmed an individual claiming to have perpetrated the hack had mentioned Poly Community supplied him the bounty to return the stolen belongings.

A lesser-known identify on the earth of crypto, Poly Community is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions with a concentrate on permitting customers to switch or swap tokens throughout completely different blockchains.

The as-yet unidentified hacker or hackers seem to have exploited a vulnerability within the digital contracts Poly Community makes use of to maneuver belongings between completely different blockchains, based on blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis. read more

Based on Friday’s assertion, the hacker has returned $340 million price of belongings and transferred the majority of the remaining to a digital pockets collectively managed by them and Poly Community.

The rest, held in tether, was frozen by the cryptocurrency agency behind the stablecoin.

“After speaking with Mr. White Hat, we have now additionally come to a extra full understanding relating to how the scenario unfolded in addition to Mr. White Hat’s authentic intention,” the assertion mentioned, with out giving additional particulars.

Poly Community introduced the hack on Tuesday, however the next day mentioned the hackers had begun returning the digital cash they’d taken. read more

The hackers mentioned in digital messages shared by Elliptic that they’d perpetrated the assault for enjoyable and that it was all the time the plan to return the tokens.

Some blockchain analysts have speculated nevertheless they could have discovered it too troublesome to launder stolen cryptocurrency on such a scale.

Reporting by Alun John in Hong Kong and Tom Westbrook in Singapore
Enhancing by David Holmes

Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.