Last week, a hacker pulled off an exceptional heist, stealing over $600 million in different cryptocurrencies and hiding it in digital wallets. Now, the company they stole from has offered them a job.
Let's explore the interesting way in which the hacker managed to scoop this much cryptocurrency and get away with it. Poly Network is a platform that allows transactions between different blockchains, and at the time, it had a vulnerability that let the hacker seize millions and millions of dollars of different currencies by redirecting transactions into their own digital wallets.
To conjure up an image for you, it's like you walked into the bank to cash a cheque, but someone sneaks up behind you, rewrites the details on the cheque for their own account, pops it back in your bag and walks out. This person then zips back and forth like The Flash, rewriting checks and never staying in the same place too long, and watches the cheddar stack up.
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However, as this hacker literally stole a monumental $610 million, Poly Network warned the culprit that they wouldn't be able to spend it. "Law enforcement in any country will regard this as a major economic crime and you will be pursued," said the company in an open letter to the hacker, who is referred to as Mr White Hat. So, they did the unthinkable. The person behind the biggest heist in DeFi history is... returning the money.
Now, with a possible job offer on the way too, it looks like it was all a minor misunderstanding between the two parties. In a post to Medium, Poly Network explained that Mr White Hat shares similar concerns regarding "Poly Network's security and overall development strategy."
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"We are also counting on more experts like Mr. White Hat to be involved in the future development of Poly Network since we believe that we share the vision to build a secure and robust distributed system," continued the company. It has also offered the hacker $500,000 for discovering the vulnerability that led to the crime. They rejected it, however, Poly Network still sent the wad of cash to Mr White Hat as a gesture of appreciation for their work.
"Also, to extend our thanks and encourage Mr. White Hat to continue contributing to security advancement in the blockchain world together with Poly Network, we cordially invite Mr. White Hat to be the Chief Security Advisor of Poly Network," said the company. And, Mr. White Hat is not considered to be legally responsible for the loss because the company is "confident that Mr. White Hat will promptly return full control of the assets to Poly Network and its users."
Featured Image Credit: Pixabay via Pexels, UbisoftTopics: News