Polygon’s Discord channel was hacked ahead of the MATIC to POL migration, resulting in security alerts and community concerns.
Polygon recently faced a significant security breach shortly before a major network upgrade.
The incident involved the compromise of the official community Discord channel, posing potential risks for users interacting with the platform.
Hackers took advantage of this breach to promote phishing links related to the upcoming migration from MATIC to POL tokens.
Polygon Discord Channel Breach
Mudit Gupta, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Polygon Labs, alerted the community about the breach on X (formerly Twitter).
He cautioned, “PSA: Do not click on any links in the Polygon community discord until further notice. It has been compromised and we’re trying to get back ownership.”
The breach is particularly concerning due to the impending token migration on the platform.
Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon’s co-founder, echoed Gupta’s warning and advised users to steer clear of any suspicious links.
As the investigation into the breach continues, Gupta admitted the uncertainty regarding the origins of the attack, noting that the compromise occurred even with Two Factor Authorization (2FA) enabled.
In response to a question from crypto investigator SomaXBT about the cause of the Discord channel hack, Gupta replied, “Not yet, all of our privileged accounts had 2FA.”
The timing of this breach is especially troubling as Polygon is approaching a significant upgrade involving the transition from MATIC to POL tokens.
The attackers appear to be exploiting the increased attention on this migration by posting phishing links disguised as fake POL airdrop announcements on the compromised Discord channel, targeting unsuspecting users eager to participate in the migration.
The full extent of the damage remains unclear, with no official count of the number of victims or the financial losses incurred.
In a subsequent update, Gupta announced that the team had regained control of the Discord channel.
He said, “Update: We’ve regained access and currently cleaning up all the changes made by the hacker to make sure they can’t come back.” However, the exact cause of the breach is still unknown.
Overview of the MATIC to POL Migration
The token migration is scheduled to begin on September 4. This transition from MATIC to POL is a community-driven upgrade that was first proposed last year.
According to Polygon’s announcement, POL will replace MATIC as the gas and staking token for the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chain.
The upgrade will occur in several phases. Initially, it will focus on swapping MATIC for POL on the PoS chain.
This will be followed by the launch of the Staking Layer and the migration of Polygon’s public chains to utilize this new layer.
The utility of the POL token will also be expanded to play a key role in the upcoming AggLayer.
Regarding the migration process, the Layer 2 network has assured users that those holding MATIC on Polygon PoS and those staking MATIC on Ethereum do not need to take any action.
However, MATIC holders on the Ethereum chain, Polygon zkEVM, and centralized exchanges (CEXes) will need to migrate their tokens. To facilitate this, the team launched a testnet migration on July 17.
Despite the security breach, MATIC has demonstrated resilience in the market.
The current MATIC price remains above $0.50, indicating a positive trend that could lead to a retest of the $0.55 level, as noted by Coingape earlier.
According to a recent price analysis, MATIC could potentially rise to $0.65 if it manages to break through the $0.55 resistance level.
