Today, the PolyNetwork interoperability protocol was hacked, at least $600.3 million in stolen funds has been made off with by the assailant.
Unknown hackers utilised an exploit in the cross-chain protocol PolyNetwork to remove at least $610 million from three chains in what could be the greatest attack in the history of decentralised finance.
PolyNetwork said the attacks had taken assets from Binance Chain, Ethereum, and the PolyNetwork, according to a Tuesday statement on Twitter.
The hackers took around $273 million from Ethereum, $85 million in USD Coin (USDC) from the PolyNetwork, and $253 million from the Binance Smart Chain, according to blockchain data from the respective networks. The vulnerability also included renBTC, wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and wrapped Ether (WETH), according to Poly.
The network announced that it would take legal action against the hackers and encouraged them to repay the monies stolen. It further asked that tokens sent from the impacted addresses be blacklisted by miners on the aforementioned chains and crypto exchanges.
When word of the theft broke, figures from DeFi and the crypto sector rushed to give help and support. According to OKEx CEO Jay Hao, the exchange’s team is “watching the flow of coins and will try to manage the situation.” Tether’s CTO Paolo Ardoino announced that the project had frozen $33 million in USDT from one of the impacted addresses.
Following the incident, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao stated the crypto exchange was coordinating with security partners “to proactively help.”
Zhao stated, “There are no guarantees.” “We’ll do everything we can. “Remain SAFU.”
PolyNetwork is a collaboration initiative of Ontology, Neo, and Switcheo that was launched last year with the goal of creating a “heterogeneous interoperability protocol alliance” that would integrate blockchains into a wider cross-chain ecosystem. The protocol enables users to transfer tokens between blockchains.
This storey is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.
