In a turn of events worthy of a Hollywood movie, cryptocurrency platform Poly Network made a staggering offer to the hacker who just stole $600 million worth from it. He offered him half a million dollars and immunity in exchange for repaying the money.
The fact is that the offer, as surprising as it may sound, can be beneficial for both parties, since the company recovers the amount it stole -one of the largest in history- and the hackers obtain a not insignificant sum and the peace of mind that the company will not prosecute your crime.
The chimera of immunity promised by some private companies
Of course, not everything is as simple as it seems, because a private company cannot offer immunity, so if the FBI or another law enforcement organization decides to investigate and finds out the identity of the hackers, they would have to answer to the law anyway.
The point is that the hacker has already returned a good part of the money and says he is not interested in the reward. What’s more, shortly after carrying out his cybercrime, its author published a series of notes mocking the company and asking for advice on where to launder his recently stolen sum. Afterwards, he already assured that he was not interested in the money and promised to return everything.
A hack for fun and that aims to improve the company’s cybersecurity
The cybercrime was carried out on Tuesday and by Thursday most of the sum had been transferred to a digital account controlled by the hacker and the company, so Poly Network has stated that it is in contact with him to complete the return process. It is a somewhat complex process, since up to 33.4 million Tether -the cryptocurrency- had been frozen by Tether as soon as the hack was made public. In addition, the hacker sent about $40,000 in cryptocurrency as a tip to the user who informed him that the Tether developers had frozen those coins, which may not be recoverable.
Finally, how could it be otherwise in such cinematographic news, the hacker published an anonymous interview in which he assured that he had carried out the theft for fun and to encourage Poly Networks to improve its security.
