Poly Network invites hacker as chief security advisor

Poly Network went through some serious trouble last week when roughly $610 million had been removed from the Polygon network, as well as the Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum. However, the hacker eventually agreed to return the funds, following a series of embedded messages, and it was determined that the attack was, in fact, “white hat behavior”.

Mr. White Hat, the mysterious figure behind the attack, impressed the Poly Network team with his skills so much that they have even given him an advisory position and a $500,000 reward, as a token of their gratitude for exposing safety flaws.

A big “no” from the hacker

Despite the generous offer, it is less likely to see Mr. White Hat accepting the bounty from Poly Network, as they have previously refused any kind of payment.

“Poly Network has no intention of holding Mr. White Hat legally responsible, as we are confident that Mr. White Hat will promptly return full control of assets to Poly Network and its users,” an official statement reads.

“As we have stated in previous announcements and encrypted messages that have been made public, we are grateful for Mr. White Hat’s outstanding contribution to Poly Network’s security enhancements.”

Surely a first for the DeFi world

There’s no doubt that the way the Network reacted to the hack was a big surprise, considering that we are, after all, talking about an individual responsible for probably the largest hack in decentralized finance. The fact that the ‘victims’ offered him a reward and, if the rumors are to be believed, a paid position at the company which they targeted could be, on the other hand, just a way of tracking him faster.

So far, Mr. White Hat’s identity wasn’t made public, but shortly after news of the hack broke, Chinese cybersecurity firm SlowMist revealed that they managed to identify the attacker’s IP and email address, as well as his device fingerprint.

Finally, it should be mentioned that except for the fact that a big part of Poly Network users wasn’t able to access their funds temporarily, all these events brought a lot of media attention to the project. Data from Google reveals a peak of interest on Wednesday, surpassing everything since last year’s launch.