Hackers stole at least $600M in Poly exploit across three chains

In what may be the largest attack in decentralized finance, unknown hackers used an exploit on cross-chain protocol Poly Network to remove at least $610 million from three chains.

According to a Tuesday update on Twitter, Poly Network said the attacks had removed assets from Binance Chain, Ethereum, and the Polygon network. Blockchain data from the respective networks shows the hackers stole roughly $273 million from Ethereum, $85 million in USD Coin (USDC) from the Polygon network, and $253 million from the Binance Smart Chain. Poly also reported renBTC, wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and wrapped Ether (WETH) were involved in the exploit.

The network said it would be pursuing legal action against the hackers and urged them to return the pilfered funds. It also requested that miners on the aforementioned chains and crypto exchanges blacklist tokens coming from the affected addresses.

Figures from DeFi and the crypto space stepped up to offer assistance and support upon news of the hack breaking. OKEx CEO Jay Hao said the exchange’s team was “watching the flow of coins and would try to manage the situation. Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino reported the project had frozen roughly $33 million in USDT from one of the affected addresses.

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Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the crypto exchange was coordinating with security partners “to proactively help” following the hack.

“There are no guarantees,” said Zhao. “We will do as much as we can. Stay SAFU.”

Launched last year, Poly Network is a collaborative project from Ontology, Neo, and Switcheo to bring a “heterogeneous interoperability protocol alliance” integrating the blockchains into the larger cross-chain ecosystem. The protocol allows users to swap tokens across different blockchains.

This story is developing and will be updated.