Poly Network suffered the biggest cryptocurrency theft in history
Cybercriminals stole over $ 600 million worth of cryptocurrencies from the platform. Cyber attacks on decentralized finance are on the rise. Here are all the details
The Poly Network platform, which connects different blockchains allowing their interoperability, suffered a cyber attack that led to the theft of cryptocurrencies worth around 600 million dollars.
THE BIGGEST THEFT IN THE HISTORY OF DECENTRALIZED FINANCE
The episode has been described as the biggest theft ever in the world of decentralized finance (DeFi): it is a financial system that does not provide for the presence of central intermediaries such as banks, but rather uses blockchain-based smart contracts. .
THE POLY NETWORK MESSAGE
On Twitter, Poly Network posted a message aimed at the perpetrators of the attack.
– Poly Network (@ PolyNetwork2) August 10, 2021
“Dear hackers,” it reads, “we want to establish communication with you and invite you to return the hacked assets. The amount of money you have hacked is the largest in DeFi history. Law enforcement in every country will treat this case as a major economic crime and you will be prosecuted. It would be very unwise for you to make further transactions. The money you stole belongs to technicians of thousands of members of the crypto community ”.
“You should talk to us to find a solution”.
THE ENTITY OF THE THEFT
As explained by CNBC , once the cybercriminals stole the money, they started sending it to other addresses (ie the digital "places" with which a certain amount of cryptocurrency is associated).
According to security firm SlowMist, cryptocurrencies worth more than $ 610 million in total have been transferred to three different addresses. Poly Network asked cryptocurrency traders to block tokens (i.e. information in the blockchain that grants a person the right to a sum of coins) from the three addresses linked to the criminals.
33 million Tethers were also stolen in the attack, but the cryptocurrency issuer said it had frozen them.
HUNT FOR MANAGERS
SlowMist said it was able to trace the criminals' IP address, their e-mail boxes and the fingerprints used for authentication on the devices. Researchers are now trying to identify those responsible for the theft at Poly Network.
According to SlowMist, it was a "long planned, organized and prepared" attack.
ATTACKS ON DECENTRALIZED FINANCE
In the first seven months of the current year, cyber attacks related to decentralized finance amounted to 361 million dollars. According to analytics firm CipherTrace, this is almost three times the value recorded in all of 2020.
So far this year, DeFi-related attacks have accounted for more than 60 percent of the total volume of attacks and thefts in the crypto world, up from 20 percent in 2020 as a whole.
Also according to CipherTrace, in the first five months of 2021 the net amount of thefts related to DeFi was 156 million dollars, more than 129 million of all last year.
What makes these attacks tempting, according to specialist firm DeFi Pulse, is the amount of money contained in decentralized finance applications used to exchange funds without intermediaries: about $ 80 billion.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/poly-network-furto-criptovalute-600-milioni/ on Wed, 11 Aug 2021 07:19:47 +0000.