Poly Community Hackers May Have Many Motives

Whereas Poly Community might have escaped a number of the worst of the injury from its current safety breach, there are questions it nonetheless should reply, AnChain.AI founder and CEO Dr. Victor Fang mentioned not too long ago.

Fang mentioned it seems the hack was brought on by the exploitation of a vulnerability in a sensible contract. That’s important, given Poly Community’s insistence their good contracts have been audited and accepted by two completely different corporations.

“As with many initiatives within the area, there’s a lack of transparency within the good contract,” Fang defined. “We have been in a position to study the good contract supply code of their Github, nevertheless, there is no such thing as a assure that their precise bytecode deployment on the blockchain is equivalent. “

“We see issues like these come up because of an absence of regulatory oversight and transparency surrounding good contract code integrity, which leaves buyers, clients, and different market contributors utterly unprotected and weak.”

Fang mentioned messages the attackers despatched by way of transactions to themselves counsel they’re positioning themselves as white hat hackers with good intentions.

“They’ve hosted a miniature Q&A inside self transactions that may be discovered by way of Etherscan.io, inside which they’ve said the intention to return all the cash over time, however slowly with a view to pressure the Poly group to speak with them,” Fang mentioned.

Even when they’ve the very best of intentions, the hackers’ technique was shortsighted, Fang believes.

“No matter their intentions, we’re of the assumption that this form of publicity stunt hurts the notion of the digital asset financial system within the eyes of the general public.” Fang mentioned. “No on a regular basis buyer or investor is snug with their cash being held hostage by vigilantism, regardless of how well-intentioned.”

Maybe there was one other much less altruistic purpose for the about-face.

“Regardless of their said reasoning, it’s price asking why the hacker determined to return the funding. Was it out of excellent will from the start, or did they maybe really feel that laundering the crypto by way of mixers earlier than liquidating at an AML compliant VASP/change was just too dangerous to aim? It might be that, taking that into consideration, the publicity was price greater than any real looking revenue.”

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