The individual responsible for one arguably the biggest cryptocurrency heist of all time has finally allowed access to the final tranche of the stolen funds. Poly Network, a major platform in the Decentralized finance niche, was the victim of a major hack attack this month. In the attack, the hacker, or hackers, made away with more than $600 million in digital tokens.
According to reports, the thieves took advantage of a weakness in Poly Network’s code. The vulnerability made it easier for them to transfer the huge amounts into their own personal accounts.
Promises to Return the Money
However, in an interesting turn of events, the attackers did not vanish with their looted wealth. Instead, they opened up dialogue with Poly Network, and made promises to return the money.
Astonishingly, they kept their word and returned nearly all the wealth, apart from $33 million of tether. Tether was frozen by its issuer last week. Tether, or USDT, is a crypto coin pegged on the US Dollar.
All was not smooth, however. More than $200 million of the returned assets was in an account that needed passwords from both Poly Network and the hacker.
For a few days, the attacker refused to divulge their password. They said that they would hand over the password once “everyone is ready.”
Poly Network cajoled the attacker, whom they nicknamed “Mr. White Hat”, to return the remaining wealth. The company even promised to award the unknown person $500,000 for helping spot the weakness in the firewall. T
hey even offered the anonymous person the chance to become their top security advisor.
Biggest Heist in History
Finally, in a blog post on Monday, the company revealed that the attacker had finally allowed them to get their hands on the remaining stolen funds.
The theft was said to be the biggest online funds heist in history. It was bigger than the $534.8 million that was stolen from Coincheck in 2018.