The Story So Far
The news of the heist, one of the largest crypto hacks in history, came out earlier this month. The hacker stole over $600 million in Ether, Tether, and Binance Coin. Poly Network tried to communicate with the hacker in a series of open letters published on Twitter. In the tweets, Poly asked the hacker to return the stolen coins — or face being pursued by law enforcement. The hacker then returned part of the stolen crypto to Poly Network. A few days later, he deposited the remaining coins in a joint account protected by private keys. According to Poly, the hacker has not yet given them the private keys. They said they hope the hacker will “transfer the private keys as soon as possible so that we can return full asset control back to the users at the earliest.” The Network had previously promised to give the hacker $500,000 as a bounty reward. However, the hacker turned down the reward.
Poly Maintained Regular Contact With the Hacker
Poly Network has tried to keep the conversation going with the hacker. Referring to the latter as “Mr. White Hat,” the network stated that the two parties were “communicating the progress on a daily basis.” They also said they were grateful to Mr. White Hat for “his outstanding contributions to Poly Network’s security enhancements.” Mr. White Hat informed the network of his concerns with their security and overall development strategy. Poly Network stated that they are working with security organizations to present the public with a robust and secure system. However, such a significant system upgrade cannot happen overnight. The Network also stated that they were counting on experts like Mr. White Hat, with whom they share a common vision, to be involved in its future development. Consequently, Poly Network cordially invited Mr. White Hat to be its Chief Security Adviser. Poly also reiterated that they did not intend to hold the hacker legally responsible and that they believe Mr. White Hat would return control over the funds at the earliest. In a Medium post, the network said, “We truly hope that no future projects or industry successors have to experience any similar incidents.”
