A total of $613 million in cryptocurrencies was stolen by hackers. This was the world’s largest crypto theft to date. How did the hackers manage to accomplish this? Let’s have a look.
What is Poly Network?
Poly Network is a decentralized finance platform that uses peer-to-peer networking to allow users to transfer tokens across many blockchains. People can use them to lend, exchange, and borrow money, trade digital currencies, speculate on the stock market, and earn interest. He was struck by its potential to allow people to transfer money without the use of intermediaries or middlemen, he said.
Smart Contacts, a transaction protocol built and programmed to execute legal events at the moment of a transaction, is used by the Defi system to invalidate intermediaries. Loans, repayments, and liquidation are all governed by this code. Around $20.5 billion in bitcoin have been invested in Defi platforms around the world as of January 2021.
How did the hackers get in?
Hackers gained access to Poly Network, a network that connects blockchains. The hackers were able to alter the code in Poly Network’s “EthCrossChainManager” Smart Contract. They were able to alter a list of public keys that are used to authenticate data from transfers. They then moved the funds from twelve different cryptocurrency networks to three wallets, which Poly Network was able to track down and disclose.
What happens now?
Following a Twitter appeal, Poly Network, a social networking corporation, has repaid more than half of the $342 million they stole. The hackers have since stated that they did this for fun and to alert the public to the vulnerability before it became a big security problem. Poly Network is currently in talks to recoup the remaining funds.
