- This is the second time the network has become a victim of hackers.
- The identity of the hacker is not known yet, however, the investigation has begun.
Poly network has become another victim of hacking attacks that have plagued the crypto space for some time. On July 2, a hacker attacked the cross-chain bridge platform and siphoned off billions of tokens.
A view of the aftermath of the attack
The platform made the news public on the same day. Through a Twitter post, it informed the community members that the attackers tempered with an intelligent contract function prompting the management to stall services temporarily.
Moreover, the team said it affected 57 crypto assets on 10 blockchains, including Metis, Ethereum, OKx, BNB Chain, Heco, Avalanche, and Polygon. The team didn’t know the worth of the tokens lost but as per the report of Peckshield, it is worth $5 million.
Disclosing the investigation status, the team said they have already talked to enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the team advised the token holders to withdraw and unlock the tokens.
Meanwhile, the DeFi security analyst @9xArhat said the hackers took advantage of a smart contract in the Polygon network. According to them, the miscreants created a validator signature and block header.
Using the loophole, the hacker was able to circumvent the verification process. It gave a pass to access tokens from Poly Network’s Ethereum pool while using its addresses. Besides Poly, they could access some other chains like BNB chain and Metis.
Going into the details
The perpetrators repeated this process several times unless they were satisfied with the number of tokens. Deploying this method, they were able to conveniently enter and exit many blockchain networks. As per the analyst, the hackers had accumulated tokens worth $42 billion.
The blockchain security solutions provider Dedaub has called this incident a “34 billion Poly Network hack.” Also, Dedaub pointed out that the protocol’s weak multi-sign mechanism has let this happen. It said that private keys were subjected to compromise because they were structurally vulnerable.
In addition to that, the analyst said that Poly’s network didn’t make its chain strong enough to combat such attacks. It also claimed that the network’s sluggish response to the attack let the volume of the theft go through the roof. Fortunately, the lack of liquidity worked in favor of protocol and prevented the amount to go up.
At the same time, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao reassured customers that it wouldn’t affect their users. He said that the exchange does not support deposits from this network, hence, users don’t have to worry.
The crypto media major Cointelegraph approached the Poly Network but didn’t get any response from them. Notably, this is not the first incident in which the network becomes a hacking victim. It happened once before in 2021. Reportedly, the infamous North Korean group Lazarus was behind it.
Conclusion
The menace of hackers wreaked havoc on the crypto community many times before. The last time it happened to the Polygon network, the hackers got away with $600 million. Now if we look at the analysis of these attacks, the primary reason that we come across is a vulnerability that hackers take advantage of. While it’s unclear when these attacks will stop, crypto users hope the firms strengthen their blockchain system.
