Largest attack on DeFi Cryptocurrency brokers: PolyNetwork loses estimated $611 Million with successful transfer of Binance Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon tokens


DeFi Poly Network Attack Theft Cryptocurrencies
Biggest ever Cryptocurrency theft. Pic credit: Marco Verch Professional/Flickr

Decentralized Finance or DeFi has just witnessed one of the largest synchronized and sophisticated attacks. Hackers successfully transferred cryptocurrencies, which include Binance Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon tokens, into their own crypto wallets.

Although the exact estimate isn’t yet ascertained, decentralized cross-chain protocol and network, PolyNetwork, has apparently lost more than $600 Million. This cryptocurrency theft might be the largest yet.

Largest DeFi attack successfully hacks crypto broker and transfer thousands of digital tokens:

PolyNetwork has confirmed that it was a victim of a major attack. Attackers successfully compromised defenses, infiltrated the cryptocurrency holding vault. The as-yet-unknown hacker group has successfully transferred Binance Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon assets into their wallets.

There is no definite value of the assets yet, and it might change as trading progresses. However, reports claim the value of stolen assets to be at least $611 million. This invariably makes the attack on PolyNetwork the largest on any DeFi network, yet.

It is important to note that multiple blockchain providers, namely, Neo, Ontology, and Switcheo, had jointly created PolyNetwork. The primary intention behind the platform was to enable users to exchange tokens across different crypto platforms, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

According to preliminary analysis, the hackers successfully stole the following assets:

The cryptocurrency community could help in ensuring hackers do not attempt such attacks in the future:

As multiple reports indicate, hackers have successfully transferred the digital tokens into their wallets. This essentially means the attackers possess the decentralized cryptocurrency.

Although the attackers possess the crypto coins, the cryptocurrency community can make it quite difficult or perhaps impossible even, to liquidate the stolen assets.

Centralized stablecoin provider Tether has blacklisted the USDT on Ethereum. The platform has blacklisted about $33 Million worth of tokens on its network.

Other cryptocurrencies could soon follow Tether’s example and blacklist the stolen assets. Simply put, these leading crypto-coin managers hold the power to refuse to deal with the stolen assets.

Such a stance should make it extremely difficult for the hackers to offload or liquidate a large portion of the Binance Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon tokens. The group could sell the stolen cryptocurrencies to small groups or individuals. However, it would take a long time, and the chances of getting caught would increase.

Speaking of getting caught, it would be interesting to see how law enforcement reacts to the largest cryptocurrency theft. In addition to blacklisting the stolen tokens, PolyNetwork also confirmed it is seeking legal action.

“We call on miners of affected blockchain and crypto exchanges to blacklist tokens coming from the above addresses. We will take legal actions and we urge the hackers to return the assets”

Blockchain security firm SlowMist claims it was able to trace the attacker’s ID. The firm also added it has identified the attacker’s email address, IP address, and device fingerprint.

SlowMist claims the attacker transacted in Monero (XMR) originally and exchanged the funds later for BNB, ETH, MATIC, and other tokens used to fund the attack.

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