Asking to remain unnamed 'because this could still be anyone from some 17-year-old who got lucky, to a group of military-grade hackers from a rogue nation' one of the co-creators of one of the major mining pools involved shared this breakdown of what's been happening behind scenes over the last few days following the massive hack of DeFi platform Curve.
On Sunday, August 6, the deadline expired for what would be most hackers' dream come true - an offer to return 90% of the stolen funds and keep the remaining 10% of the approximately $62 million stolen, without repercussions.
However, things didn't go as straightforward as one might expect...
I assumed we would either see those terms being met, or none of it returned. Why give some back if it's not enough to stop a global manhunt where you are the target? Especially when the offer includes keeping a few million.
But that's what happened, as most of the funds were returned, but they remain target of an investigation that just went in to overdrive, first by re-allocating some of the funds they were prepared to let the hacker keep, now going towards the bounty offered for information that leads to his location.
Starting August 5th, the individual or group responsible for the Curve protocol hack began transferring funds back to one of the impacted pools, Alchemix Finance. This saw a return of $22 million, divided into 7,258 ethers (ETH) and 4,821 alETH.
Moreover, another operation enabled Metronome to recover $13 million, adding another layer of complexity to the unfolding events.
The JPEG'd pool, having experienced a full return of their stolen assets amounting to $11.5 million (5,495.4 Wrapped Ethers or WETH), announced they would not pursue legal action. Instead, they labeled this a “white hat ransom” and agreed to the initial offer, rewarding the hacker with the promised 10%.
That left roughly $18 million still missing - so as the hacker's offer expired, Curve announced a public reward of $1.8 million (10% of the total value) for information leading to the recovery of the remaining funds.
If the hacker told any friends, he better hope they like him more than a $1.8 million payout...
Anything being returned is a sign that whoever these hackers are, they're probably not working for their home government, and without that level of protection, they may discover things are a lot harder than expected for internationally wanted criminals with $2 million rewards attached to them - spending any of that stolen crypto may bring them more paranoia than enjoyment.
But Curve says there's still one way they would be willing to take their search off the table - if the hacker decides to return the full amount - the 'keep 10%' part is no longer a part of the deal.
Curve's primary focus has now shifted from trying to resolve the situation, to hunting down and "relentlessly pursuing" the individual or group responsible until they are apprehended.
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Author: Jules Laurent
Euro Newsroom |
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