The hacker was invited to work for a company from which he stole hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. The attacker who organized one of the largest attacks on the Poly Network blockchain platform was offered the position of a security advisor. This happened after he returned to the company the entire amount that he had stolen – about $ 600 million. Vladislav Viktorov in details.
Hacking of crypto platforms is not uncommon now. In the past month alone, there have been several cases. The damage from one of the attacks amounted to more than a million dollars, another robbery brought the hackers $ 20 million.Cryptocurrency platforms have become easy prey for professional hackers, says Vasily Diaghilev, head of the Check Point Software Technologies office in Russia and the CIS:
“When creating such projects, priority is given not to information security issues, but to ease of use, speed of transactions. And this naturally affects the level of security. Since these projects have arisen quite recently, there are very few specialists who could develop security systems for these projects and predict the moves of a hacker. Mechanisms to prevent attacks are created after something has happened, there have been some incidents. “
As a rule, cybercriminals cannot be caught, and money disappears without a trace. That is why the story of the theft of a $ 600 million cryptocurrency is unique in many ways. The hacker, nicknamed Mister White Hat, not only did not hide, but he himself returned everything he took. Many cryptanalysts believe that the attacker was simply frightened. Immediately after the attack, representatives of the Poly Network warned the attacker that he would be pursued by the special services of several countries at once. And third-party cybersecurity experts said they had tracked down an IT hacker.
But even if all this did not embarrass him, he would hardly have been able to cash out all the stolen cryptoassets without consequences, says Viktor Pershikov, a leading analyst at 8848 Invest: “We must take into account the fact that the blockchain, despite its anonymity, is an absolutely transparent technological solution. The amounts in open blockchains are clearly visible, it is clear from which wallets they come, where they go.
If one exchange finds out that they are trying to get a cryptocurrency that was obtained in an illegal way, then large platforms usually interact with each other and suppress attempts to conduct illegal operations.
If we are talking about the code of this or that transfer, of course, you can use it to see how it happened, where was the money before and where it was sent in the future. ”
Although not without risk, even $ 600 million in cryptocurrency, as the interlocutors of Kommersant FM note, can be cashed out if desired. But Mr. White Hat, apparently, did not even try to do it. He contacted Poly Network himself, writing to them: “I was not interested in money, I wanted to show users that you cannot bet your whole life on something that you cannot figure out.”
In an interview with Kommersant FM, Russian hacker Alexander Varskoy noted that he was delighted with his colleague’s noble intentions, if they were indeed noble: “Gary McKinnon once hacked NASA not for the purpose of blackmail, but to find documents on interaction with other unearthly civilizations … But that was a long time ago. Even the era of Anonymous has passed – there people broke something in a crowd, generated news stories. It is now 2021, when everything is working on the crypt. And it’s amazing to hear such statements ”.
In addition to motivating the hacker, users of social networks are discussing the fee that the platform hacked by him promised him – $ 500 thousand. Many consider the amount too high. But Zecurion CEO Alexei Raevsky considers half a million dollars to be a perfectly normal reward. By the way, he himself often hired hackers.
“If we add up both the possible damage and the fact that the company was able to avoid it, everything works for the image of Poly Network, so this is probably a normal amount. If we are talking about an annual salary, several hundred thousand dollars in American markets is, in principle, a normal salary for a specialist. It still depends on how successful a person is as a developer, because breaking and building are slightly different things. But if it is possible to establish interaction, then it is very often quite fruitful, “- said Raevsky.
In the end, the hacker gave up half a million dollars. And, as experts say, he lost little. After all, if he agrees to the position of a security adviser, he may be offered a salary of at least twice as much.
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