Poloniex verifies the hackers’ identity and offers a $10 million white hat bounty to retrieve funds pilfered.
According to on-chain data published by blockchain security company PeckShield, Poloniex has publicly identified the hacker responsible for stealing $120 million from the exchange on Nov. 10.
The hacker has also been offered a $10 million white bounty if the money is returned by Nov. 25. The biggest stakeholder of Poloniex, Justin Sun, used the Ethereum network to send blockchain messages to addresses compromised in the breach.
Sixteen transactions totaling $0.10 in Ethereum were started by Sun’s wallets, all of which had identical multilingual messages. The transaction barrage alerted the hacker to the fact that Poloniex had successfully verified their identity and provided them with a $10 million white hat prize.
The on-chain letter states that in the event that the money is not returned, Poloniex has contacted law authorities from China, Russia, and the United States to pursue legal action against the hacker.
The statement said that all of the money that had been stolen had been located, marked for tracking, and was no longer useful. It also threatened to freeze the accounts of any financial counterparties that received these assets.
According to the company, the attacker has until November 25th to voluntarily refund the monies. As stated in the message:
“If not returned by that time, police forces from multiple countries will take action.”
Poloniex first offered a white hat prize equal to 5% of the stolen money to encourage collaboration. The incentive has grown to an incredible $10 million as the seven-day deadline drew near without any compliance.
The Hack
On November 10, a vulnerability of the Poloniex exchange’s hot wallet led to the theft of $120 million in cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Tron (TRX).
Notably, 80% of the stolen assets were Ethereum, Tron, and Bitcoin; other losses included 3.1 million XRP and 577 billion Shiba Inu (SHIB). At the time, Poloniex promised to reimburse impacted users for their losses and momentarily stopped accepting withdrawals to investigate the incident and strengthen security.
The exchange said it would start accepting deposits and withdrawals again the following week. On the day of the incident, Sun offered a 5% bounty on the stolen money, but the attackers didn’t reply.
Poloniex is taking a strong stand against the biggest black hat hacks of the year with the enhanced $10 million prize and the support of law enforcement.
