Huge crypto exchange hack sees $600m stolen

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Experts believe heist was made possible through a rare cryptography issue

Cryptocurrencies
(Image credit: vjkombajn/Pixabay)

Hackers have stolen an estimated $600 million what is thought to be the largest cryptocurrency heist ever. 

Poly Network, a decentralized cross-chain protocol and network that helps facilitate swapping tokens across multiple blockchains, revealed it has been robbed of $273 million of Ethereum tokens, $253 million in tokens on Binance Smart Chain and $85 million in USDC on the Polygon network.

"We call on miners of affected blockchain and crypto exchanges to blacklist tokens coming from the above addresses," it posted PolyNetwork on Twitter, while publishing the wallet addresses of the culprits.

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According to The Block, since the theft, Tether has blacklisted about $33 million of the stolen USDT that was stolen in the attack. 

Wider implications

Citing a report from research company CipherTrace, the BBC pointed out that losses from fraud in the decentralized finance (Defi) sector had already hit an all-time high of $474m in the first seven months of the year, prior to the theft.

Meanwhile, Poly Network threatened the hackers with legal action urging them to return the loot, even as other members in the Defi space offered their assistance.

“We are aware of the poly.network exploit that occurred today. While no one controls BSC (or ETH), we are coordinating with all our security partners to proactively help. There are no guarantees. We will do as much as we can,” tweeted Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange.

The Block suggests the hackers exploited a “cryptography issue,” which it added was a rarity without going into much detail.

Noting the impact of the hack on the wider cryptocurrency ecosystem, The Block shared that following the announcement, trading pool O3, which uses Poly Network for its operations, was forced to suspend its cross-chain functionality.

Via The Block

Mayank Sharma
Mayank Sharma

With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’s TechRadar Pro’s expert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.