Polygon has recently admitted that their network was hacked, and 801k MATIC tokens were stolen. It reports that they were informed about a vulnerability in the network by a group of white hat hackers. They informed the team that the Polygon PoS genesis contract has some bugs. This was followed by Polygon working with the whitehat hackers to fix it.
Polygon fixed the network, but!
After the white hackers reported the bug via Immunefi, which is Polygon’s bug bounty manager, all of them started working on it. On 4th December, the entire team worked non-stop to bring a fix. And in the next 24 hours, the core devs upgraded 80% of the network. It was during this time that the malicious hackers identified movement in the network and stole 801,601 MATIC tokens. With the current price of MATIC, the hack was worth nearly $2 million.
Polygon was quick to work on the fix, but still, they were unable to secure it completely on time. The upgrade was complete on 5th December, which is also the reason why there was this sudden hard fork which no one was informed about in advance. The good part is that while Polygon lost nearly $2 million to the malicious hacker, they awarded the white hats more than that. The hackers received a total of $3.46 million for their efforts. The lost MATIC tokens will be taken care of by the foundation.
It is also reported that the bug had put around $24 billion worth of MATIC tokens at risk. If not discovered on time, it could have become a very big deal.
A big problem
Polygon network has been facing a lot of vulnerability issues lately. There was a $600 million hack recently where nearly $84 million was compromised from the Polygon network. It is a different thing that Polygon did get back the funds as the hackers say that it was just for fun. They returned the amount in parts and were also offered a job. But the problem is much bigger than this. We often hear about such hacks and a lot of money is lost to malicious hackers in the crypto world.
What are your thoughts as Polygon reports 801k MATIC tokens were stolen in December? And do you think such hacks can be stopped? Let us know in the comments below. Also, if you found our content informative do like and share it with your friends.
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