Hacker returns the bulk of the $600 million stolen

The hacker who has performed a colossal cyber heist, taking over $600 million in crypto tokens, has returned almost all of the take. 

Poly Network, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that the perpetrator targeted, announced almost all of the funds were returned.

“All the remaining user assets on Ethereum (except for the frozen USDT) had been transferred to the multisig wallet controlled by Mr. White Hat and Poly Network team,” the company claims on Twitter.

Poly Networks dubbed the perpetrator ‘Mr. White Hat’, a term used to describe ethical hackers to show that the perpetrator carried out the attack to expose security vulnerabilities.

According to Reuters, the only unreturned tokens are the $33 million in tehther stablecoins frozen earlier in the week by cryptocurrency firm Tether.

Poly Network offered the hacker $500 thousand to return the stolen assets and promised he would face no charges or other actions for the attack. 

“We think this behavior is white hat behavior, therefore this $500,000 USD will be seen as completely legal bounty reward,” Poly Network told the hacker, according to messages shared by Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic.

On Wednesday, the perpetrator said he carried out the hack for fun and to expose vulnerabilities in the Poly Network system. 

According to the hacker, returning the funds was and still is a part of the plan.

“I am not very interested in money! […] I announced the returning decision before midnight, so people who had faith in me should had a good rest,” the perpetrator wrote.

Reports show that the stolen amount of $610 million surpasses the criminal losses DeFi sector witnesses during the whole year so far. Reuters reports that criminal losses in January-July amounted to $474 million.

Assets stolen included $253 million in tokens on Binance Smart Chain, $266 million in Ethereum tokens, and $85 million in USDC on Polygon network.

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