UPDATE: Poloniex Hacker IDENTIFIED

November 19, 2023 8:09 pm Comments

Time seems to be running out for the Poloniex hacker.

ProCoin News previously reported that the popular exchange was hacked for roughly $110 million by a hacker who was offered a 5% bug bounty from Justin Sun in exchange for the return of the stolen funds.

Now, Justin Sun has informed the hacker that they have been identified. Sun even sent an on-chain message to the hacker demanding the return of the stolen money and informed the hacker that law enforcement agencies in multiple countries are currently working on the case.

Community member Yazan shared Justin Sun’s on-chain message to the hacker and summed up the proposed deal:

“The identity of the Poloniex exchange hacker has been confirmed. Poloniex is offering him a $10 million white hat reward if he decides to return the funds by November 25, 2023. Otherwise, they will involve authorities.”

On-chain sleuth Entrinoboss explained:

“The hacker who breached the Poloniex exchange has reportedly exhibited erratic behavior:

1. The hacker, identified as 0x0a59, initiated the attack around 11 AM UTC and targeted Poloniex’s hot wallet (0xa910), resulting in approximately $100m in losses

2. Stolen funds included 11m USDT, exchanged for ETH, and 4.98m USDC, among altcoins like ELON, SHIB, and WBTC

3. Acquired 206.73m TRX ($22.8m) by buying TRX with USDC on Ethereum and USDT on Tron, impacting TRX’s price

4. Transferred 10.5m GLM tokens ($2.56m) to the token contract, effectively burning the tokens

Moreover, according to X-explore, the Poloniex hacker, who is likely Lazarus Group, follows a similar pattern seen in a prior Stake dot com attack, indicating a potential leaked private key.

Previously, Justin Sun had offered a 5% white hat bounty to the hacker, encouraging the return of stolen funds within the next 7 days before involving law enforcement.”

Crypto Slate provided background information on the hack:

The Poloniex hack occurred on Nov. 10 through a compromise of the exchange’s hot wallet — resulting in the loss of $120 million in various cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum (ETH), Tron (TRX), and Bitcoin (BTC).

Notably, Ethereum, Tron, and Bitcoin accounted for 80% of the stolen assets, while additional losses included 3.1 million XRP and 577 billion Shiba Inu (SHIB).

Blockchain security and analytics firm PeckShield sounded the alarm and pointed Justin Sun to a specific address on the Ethereum network, though it is not yet known if the address is associated with the hacker at all or guilty of anything malicious.

U Today noted:

It should be noted that so far, the Poloniex hack is the second largest attack in crypto in 2023. An Euler Finance attacker managed to steal over $190 million on March 13.

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