DeFi, Poly Network hacked: $600m in crypto stolen

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Yesterday, DeFi’s cross-chain platform, Poly Network was hacked with the equivalent of $600 million in stolen crypto. At the time, the present attack would be one of the largest hacks in crypto history. 

“We are sorry to announce that #PolyNetwork was attacked on Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum

and Polygon. Assets had been transferred to hacker’s following addresses:

ETH: 0xC8a65Fadf0e0dDAf421F28FEAb69Bf6E2E589963

BSC: 0x0D6e286A7cfD25E0c01fEe9756765D8033B32C71″.

As Poly Network is a cross-chain protocol, i.e. it allows transactions between multiple chains such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Ethereum and Polygon, all three were involved in the attack. 

Not only that, but by transparently showing the three addresses held by the hackers, it is possible to count the total amount stolen. This is more than $600 million in different crypto assets, distributed as follows:

  • For the BSC blockchain, the assets involved are BUSD, BTCB, ETHB and BNB; 
  • On Ethereum, however, the attack involved the USDC, DAI, UNI, SHIB and FEI cryptocurrencies.

The Poly team then called the attention of all crypto-asset projects involved, as well as blockchain miners and exchanges, inviting them to blacklist tokens from the published hacker addresses.   

Poly Network hacked and the collaboration between the involved crypto projects

With an attack of this size and the various blockchains involved, there are many crypto players who have tweeted responses to Poly Network’s appeal, mostly to show their collaboration.

Huobi co-founder Du Jun says he has taken charge of the situation:

“Huobi has taken notice of the large sum stolen from the PolyNetwork tonight. Our risk control and security teams are already tracking and identifying the addresses involved. We’ll do everything in our power to assist and protect the crypto community. #StrongerTogether”.

At the same time, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said he has already taken action on the matter. 

“Tether just froze ~33M $USDt on 0xC8a65Fadf0e0dDAf421F28FEAb69Bf6E2E589963 as part of the PolyNetwork hack”.

Even the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao or CZ, tweeted about it:

“We are aware of the http://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. Stay #SAFU”.

Binance CEO’s personal thoughts on Poly Network case

Zhao aka CZ is always very thoughtful on crypto issues and wanted to express his personal thoughts on arguments arising from Poly Network’s current situation. 

In a tweet thread, the CEO of Binance writes as follows:

“A big DeFi hack. Brings up a few controversial topics: 

  1. is CEX or DeFi safer? Well, they are just different. They have different risk characteristics. Learn about how to use them safely before using them. 

  2. Is fiat safer then? Well, it’s different again. It’s your own judgement. Inflation, high fees, and banks preventing you from spending your money.

  3. How did people freeze funds on the blockchain? Well, it depends on how the smart contract is written, I guess. Even on native blockchains (without smart contracts), there are risks of 51% attacks. It’s kinda a taboo’ed word in our industry. But you should read about it.

  4. Why are CEX CEOs busy while a DeFi gets hacked? We do try to help. While we can’t freeze funds on blockchains, if those funds land on our CEX (Binance), we will (try to) freeze them. So, we have a lot of blockchain analysis to do. Nothing is easy. We try.

Unpopular opinion: nothing is risk free. Education/learning in the best protection. Read, learn about risks. Then manage it”.

CZ’s Binance is becoming an ever bigger player in the crypto world. In addition to being the largest centralized exchange by market volume and the multitude of services it offers, it is also a gateway to the DeFi world.

At the beginning of 2021, Binance’s focus on its users had developed the “psychology of a market cycle”, with interesting insights into the (often unconscious) behaviour of its own crypto traders.

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