Poly Network Hack...The Hackers Return $260 Million Worth Crypto Back to Poly Network

In an interesting turn of events today, just one day after the biggest hack in crypto industry worth more than $600 million, the attackers have returned about one third of the stolen funds.

Yesterday Poly Network, a cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) platform suffered an exploit on Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Polygon, with hackers draining more than $600 million worth funds in crypto.

Later on Poly Network urged hackers to return the stolen funds, saying they are planning legal action. In response, the hackers posted a string of messages(by embedding text in transactions sent to themselves), saying they are ready to return the funds and need a way to return them. In response, Poly Network posted addresses to send the funds and the lost funds started flowing in.

First the hackers sent back $1 million in USDC on Polygon network, in three transaction. Then they also sent back $1.1 million in BTCB, $2 million in Shib and $0.6 million in FEI.

A few hour latter, after having encoded discussion with Poly Network devs, the exploiters returned nearly all fund on Binance Smart Chain. $46.4 million in BTCB, $86 million in ETH and $119 million in BUSD were returned with $2.6 million worth BNB remaining.

Poly Network didn't confirmed to any potential settlement with hackers.

There have been several theories regarding why hackers choose to return the stolen funds. Blockchain security firm Slowmist, claimed that they have been able to tract the digital footprints of the attackers, that might help to identify them. Slowmist's claims if true, might have forced exploiters hands into returning funds. Tom Robinson, cofounder of crypto tracking firm Elliptic, cited the troubles related to laundering such extraordinary amounts of crypto as one of the reason behind the refund.