Poly Network has offered the hacker responsible for a $610 million hack an advisory post and $500,000 – whether they want it or not.
According to a Tuesday report, the Poly Network team stated that it will be asking a hacker to the position of top security advisor in an apparent attempt to obtain access to their skills. In addition, despite the fact that the attacker, called “Mr. White Hat” by Poly, has previously denied payment, the project would send a $500,000 bounty to him.
“Poly Network has no intention of holding Mr. White Hat legally responsible, as we are confident that Mr. White Hat will promptly return full control of the assets to Poly Network and its users,” the team stated.
“As we have stated in previous announcements and encrypted messages that have been made public, we are grateful for Mr. White Hat’s outstanding contribution to Poly Network’s security enhancements.” says the company.
On August 10, researchers revealed that $610 million had been taken from the Polygon network, Binance Smart Chain, and Ethereum. Following that, the hacker talked with the Poly Network team and others via Ethereum transactions containing messages, agreeing to refund the monies.
Mr. White Hat was offered a $500,000 bounty when Poly Network ruled that the attack was “white hat behaviour.”
“since we believe that we share the vision to build a secure and robust distributed system.” the Poly Network team said, “counting on more experts like Mr. White Hat to be involved”
The hacker returned all of the funds except $33 million in frozen Tether (USDT), but has yet to hand over the key to the multisig wallet Poly used to make the transfer.
It’s a bit of a surprise that the perpetrator of DeFi’s biggest hack has been awarded a prize and a presumably compensated position at the company that was the subject of their attack.
Though the hacker’s identity has not been revealed, Chinese cybersecurity firm SlowMist issued an update shortly after the news of the breach leaked, claiming that its investigators had tracked down the attacker’s email address, IP address, and device fingerprint.
Mr. White Hat’s remarkable contribution to Poly Network’s security advancements is much appreciated, according to Poly Network.
“While there were certain misunderstandings in the beginning due to poor communication channels, we now understand Mr. White Hat’s vision for Defi and the crypto world, which is in line with Poly Network’s ambitions from the very beginning.”
Except for thousands of users who were momentarily unable to access their funds, the events of the previous week appear to have resulted in increased media coverage of the Poly Network. Google data shows that interest in the DeFi project peaked on Aug. 11 and is currently far higher than it was when Poly first started last year.
