Some hackers have landed one of the biggest hits in the decentralized finance industry, stealing around $ 600 million in crypto assets from the DeFi Poly Network platform. The criminals exploited a vulnerability in the system. The company immediately denounced the episode on Twitter, also indicating the addresses of the digital wallets where the stolen assets would be transferred.
More specifically, the perpetrators of the cyber attack allegedly stole $ 267 million in Ether, $ 252 million in Binance coin and about $ 85 million in USD coin, reports the BBC. In a letter posted on its Twitter profile, Poly Network urged hackers to give everything back. «The value of the stolen assets is the largest in the history of decentralized finance. The police in every country will consider this attack as a serious economic crime, ”reads the document published on the social network. “The money you stole belongs to tens of thousands of people. You should contact us to find a solution ».
Poly Network is a platform that allows users to exchange tokens across different blockchains. The funds that disappeared after this attack exceed the value of the losses suffered by the entire DeFi sector between January and July 2021 due to cyber breaches and amounted to 474 million dollars, according to a report by CipherTrace, a company specializing in cybersecurity, payment systems. and crypto assets.
So far, the losses recorded in the cryptocurrency market in 2021 and due to criminal activity have reached the threshold of 681 million dollars, down from the values of 2020 (1.9 billion dollars) and 2019 (4.5 billion dollars). dollars). The attack on Poly Network, due to the extent of the stolen assets, can be compared to the one suffered in 2018 by the Coincheck exchange service, which lost $ 530 million in cryptocurrencies. Still in 2014, the Mt. Gox platform was in crisis after losing half a billion dollars in Bitcoin.
.