Following the audacious theft of nearly $114 million from Poloniex, one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges, the perpetrator now finds themselves in a unique predicament. The Poloniex hacker bounty offer of a substantial $10 million has been made, should they choose to return the stolen funds. Justin Sun, in a statement on-chain, further pointed out that the hacker is unable to transfer or launder the stolen assets.
Unmasking the Poloniex Culprit
According to Justin Sun, the Poloniex exchange team has successfully confirmed the identity of the individual responsible for the November 10 hack. The revelation came on November 18, via a message attached to a transaction sent to the hacker’s address. Law enforcement agencies from China, the USA, and Russia have been enlisted in this intriguing chase.
The message, penned in Chinese, English, Russian, and Korean, was sent as an input data message (IDM) from one of Justin Sun’s Ethereum (ETH) wallets. The hacker has been given a seven-day ultimatum to return the stolen assets. If they comply, they stand to receive a handsome $10 million bug bounty. If they fail to meet the deadline, international police forces will spring into action.
Tracking the Stolen Funds
Justin Sun also revealed that the stolen funds have been flagged for tracking, effectively rendering them unusable. Any attempts to launder the money would be futile as all financial counterparties would be frozen. This was a result of the hacker’s ill-gotten gains including 3.1 million XRP, 32 million U.S. Dollar Tethers (USDT), around 284 Ethers (ETH), and 86.5 Wrapped Bitcoins (WBTC), along with 35 different TRC-20 tokens.
Interestingly, this wasn’t the first bounty offer made to the hacker. Justin Sun initially proposed a 5% bounty, amounting to nearly $5.7 million, which was met with silence.
Rebuilding Poloniex
Despite the setback, the Poloniex team has been hard at work to restore the exchange’s operational functionality. They are currently strengthening their security measures through a comprehensive top-tier audit. Once completed, the exchange can resume its normal trading operations.
It’s worth noting that the Poloniex hack is the second-largest attack in the crypto space in 2023. Earlier in the year, an attacker managed to steal over $190 million from Euler Finance. However, all stolen funds were returned within a month, making the Poloniex incident the largest unresolved ‘black hat’ attack in the past year.
Keeping track of your crypto investments and staying informed about such incidents can be a daunting task. However, with applications like cryptoview.io, you can manage your portfolio and stay updated on the latest happenings in the crypto world.
