Q&A With Poly Hacker, Hero Or Villain Behind Biggest DeFi In History?

Reynaldo Marquez

3 years ago

3 mins read

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The crypto industry was taken by storm when Poly Network, an interoperable cross-chain platform, revealed that they were attacked. The hacker pulled what turned out to be one of the biggest thefts in DeFi history, at least, that it has been called by the mainstream media.

The attacker managed to transfer funds from several blockchains connected by a blockchain agnostic trading pool, O3 Swap. Created by Poly Network and O3 Labs, the platform allows users to interact with Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Polygon, and others.

Using an exploit, the hacker took control of $273 million on Ethereum, $253 million on BSC, and $85 million on Polygon. In total, the attacker took over $600 million. However, the Poly Network team reached out to establish a communication channel.

The message began with a “Dear Hacker” and appeals to the entity’s consciousness and the well-being of the community. The message worked, as the hacker started to return the stolen funds.

pic.twitter.com/Yzw4oDenjC

— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 10, 2021

Data provided by Poly Network claims that they have received around $4 million from the addresses used by the bad actor. In reply, the team told the hacker that things “are moving to the right direction”.

So far, we have received a total value of $4,772,297.675 assets returned by the hacker.

ETH address: $2,654,946.051
BSC address: $1,107,870.815
Polygon address: $1,009,480.809 pic.twitter.com/bPFAQk4mvS

— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 11, 2021

In the meantime, the Poly hacker took some time to do a Questions & Answers (Q&A) session via messages embedded in ETH transactions. Founder of Primitive Crypto Dovey Wan shared the answers via her Twitter account in an attempt to shed light on the mastermind behind one of DeFi’s worst exploits also know in certain community circles as “Etherhood”.

Speaking on the main reason to conduct hacking operations, the bad actor simply replied, “for fun”. Specifically, “Etherhood” decided to go after Poly because “cross-chain hacking is hot”, but added that the decision to conduct the operation was not taken lightly.

He decided to go ahead with the attack to “keep the funds safe” as the hacker believed that the team behind the project was not to be trusted. In their own interpretation, Etherhood provided a “useful” service:

WHEN SPOTTING THE BUG, I HAD A MIXED FEELING. ASK YOURSELF WHAT TO DO HAD YOU FACING SO MUCH FORTUNE. ASKING THE PROJECT TEAM POLITELY SO THAT THEY CAN FIX IT? ANYONE COULD BE THE TRAITOR GIVEN ONE BILLION! I CAN TRUST NOBODY! THE ONLY SOLUTION I CAN COME UP WITH IS SAVING IT IN A _TRUSTED_ ACCOUNT WHILE KEEPING MYSELF _ANONYMOUS_ AND _SAFE_.

Poly Hacker Trying To Save The World?

While details of the hack were still under investigation, Wan speculated on the possibility that the attack was conducted by insiders. Poly Network was a relatively unknown project before it was hacked. In that sense, she pointed out the extent of the DeFi ecosystem and its potential risks and rewards:

Not saying Poly Network is a scam as PlusToken, just saying the highly localized Chinese crypto community always have their own version to utilize the same blockchain infra, for good and for bad, most are unseen and lack of accessibility to westerners, with MASSIVE capital sink.

The hacker himself denied being part of an inside job and claimed that the attack served as a way to uncover the vulnerability on the system before real “insiders exploit” it. Thus, he referred to the attack as one way of “saving the world” while adding the following:

I UNDERSTOOD THE RISK OF EXPOSING MYSELF EVEN IF I DON’T DO EVIL. SO I USED TEMPORARY EMAIL, IP OR _SO CALLED_ FINGERPRINT, WHICH WERE UNTRACABLE. I PREFER TO STAY IN THE DARK AND SAVE THE WORLD.

Popular YouTuber and educator Michael Gu, founder of Boxmining, claimed to be a victim of the hack. Gu apparently lost a significant portion of his saving without any way of taking them back.

Despite the hacker’s intention with the attack on Poly, this goes to show the other side of the coin. The one that goes beyond heroes and villains and focuses on those that truly lost something meaningful.

1) So I'm a victim of the @PolyNetwork2 hack – it can potentially be a significant amount of my ETH/ BTC/ USDC savings. I'm probably still in the denial phase. It seems at this point there isn't much I can do other than to sit on my hands.

— Boxmining (@boxmining) August 10, 2021

At the time of writing, ETH trades at $3,240 with a 4.7% profit in the daily chart.

Poly Hacker Ethereum ETH ETHUSD — Ethereum with bullish momentum in the daily chart. Source: ETHUSD Tradingview

Reynaldo Marquez

A literature major, Reynaldo Márquez has been deeply immersed in the crypto industry since 2017. His journey began with translating articles for various crypto news outlets, a role he took on with zeal. In 2018, amidst a challenging market, he embraced his first writing assignment, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the nascent industry and the promise of change it bears for many people worldwide.
In March 2021, he joined the prestigious crypto news outlet NewsBTC and Bitcoinist, where he not only reported on the latest crypto news but also had the privilege of interviewing some of the industry's most influential figures. A year later, his dedication and hard work were recognized, and he was promoted to Managing Editor, a position he currently holds with pride.
He believes in honesty, good communication, hard work, and the power of cryptocurrency and its potential to transform people's lives, especially those alienated by the legacy financial system. Born in 1992 in Venezuela, Reynaldo is familiar with how governments and central banks can negatively affect people, their everyday lives, and their futures by creating inflation and erasing their hopes for a better future. Thus, like many Venezuelans, he embraced this new technology to help him and his family navigate difficult times.
In another life, Reynaldo would have pursued a career as an investigator, most likely tracking down the origins of the Cyberpunk movement with the publication of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer.’ The intersection between fiction and reality, with the materialization of Bitcoin in 2009, would have allowed him to dive deep into the crypto sphere as something more than a financial phenomenon but also a cultural shift in society that was brewing since the XX century, and maybe even sooner, in the XIX century with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience.’
But that’s for another life. In this one, Reynaldo has been trading to improve his trading skills. Since 2023, he has been trying to learn Python to create successful strategies and find ways to execute them. It is a difficult task, which continues to keep him busy today and will most likely continue to keep him busy in the near and long term.
In his free time, he enjoys lifting heavy objects, reading, watching movies, and listening to his favorite music. Some of his favorite authors are Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Reinaldo Arenas, Rafael Cadenas, and many others. Lately, he has been primarily interested in reading about dystopic societies, a topic that deeply resonates with the crypto industry.
Since 2023, he has lived in Spain with his wife. He loves the weather, the food, and the people and their culture. They both expect to travel much more within the country they now call home and beyond its border. He hopes to retire with his wife, maybe in a quiet place near a beach, but most likely in a city close to a library and a university with his kids and, hopefully, grandkids.

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