Status: 08/12/2021 8:51 p.m.
Perhaps he just wanted to point out security gaps and not get rich: The hacker who stole $ 600 million in crypto money in the attack on the Poly Network platform has apparently repaid everything.
The hacker, who is apparently behind one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts to date, has returned a large part of the looted 600 million dollars (510 million euros). The platform affected by the attack, Poly Network, reported on Twitter that almost all of its assets had been recovered. The transactions are not yet completed.
Initially, Poly Network reported that the hacker had returned units of the cryptocurrency ether worth $ 4.6 million, $ 252 million in so-called Binance tokens and $ 85 million in Polygon. Ethers with a value of 268 million US dollars are still open.
On Thursday evening, the platform then tweeted that all ether values had been transferred.
This seems to prove to be true that the theft was not carried out by ordinary criminals. Rather, the evidence suggests that a hacker took drastic action to point out the weak point in Poly Network’s technical protocol.
Apparently a “benign hacker” at work
Poly Network called the alleged perpetrator “Mr. White Hat”. In the jargon of the security industry, this is used to describe benign hackers.
Traces that Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic, a London-based company for blockchain analysis and compliance, discovered in the hacker’s publicly viewable transfers had also pointed in this direction.
Hacker wanted to point out security holes
Robinson published a three-page question and answer session on Twitter, which the hacker had published in the form of a self-interview. In the text, the hacker claims that he is not very interested in the money. “I have enough money.”
He always planned to return the amounts. The theft was supposed to show the weaknesses in the software from Poly Network.