$600 million stolen – biggest cryptocurrency theft ever?

Over $600 million stolen in what could be one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts ever

Hackers tapped into Poly Network, which is a platform that helps to connect different blockchains in order to work together.

Poly Network announced the attack on Twitter and asked to establish communication with the hackers, and urged them to “return the hacked assets.”

“The amount of money you hacked is the biggest in defi history,” Poly Network said in another tweet

Once the hackers stole the money, they began to send it to various other cryptocurrency addresses.

Hackers returned about half of the $610 million or so they pilfered Tuesday in what was likely one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts on record in the burgeoning DeFi sector

Researchers at security company SlowMist said a total of more than $610 million worth of cryptocurrency was transferred to three different addresses.

Poly Network told cryptocurrency exchanges to “blacklist tokens” that were coming from the addresses that were linked to the hackers.

“We will take legal actions and we urge the hackers to return the assets,” Poly Network said on Twitter.

SlowMist said in a tweet that their researchers had “grasped the attacker’s mailbox, IP, and device fingerprints” and are “tracking possible identity clues related to the Poly Network attacker.”

DeFi has become a key target for attacks

DeFi-related hacks totalled $361 million since the start of this year until July.

That is an increase of nearly three times from the whole of 2020, according to cryptocurrency compliance company CipherTrace.

DeFi-related fraud is also on the rise, they accounted for 54% of total crypto fraud volume versus 3% for all of last year.

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