In two separate incidents, the hackers responsible for the attacks on Euler Finance and to the multi-chain token bridge Allbridge, he agreed to return the loot.
HACKERS RETURN THE STOLEN FUNDS
On April 4, Euler Labs took to Twitter to reveal that the hacker responsible for the $200 million attack on Euler Finance has agreed to return all funds stolen from the attack that took place on March 13. This comes shortly following the attacker returned approximately USD 10 million in Ethereum (ETH) and Dai (DAI) last week.
Following successful negotiations, all of the recoverable funds taken from the Euler protocol on March 13th have now been successfully returned by the exploiter.
— Euler Labs (@eulerfinance) April 3, 2023
In early March, the hacker returned Euler more than 51,000 ETH, amounting to nearly $120 million, following Euler threatened the author with legal action and offered a $1 million reward campaign to fix the situation.
After the news broke, Euler’s native token, EUL, went up considerably. According to CoinMarketCap, EUL is up more than 12% in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, in the last seven days, the token has gained almost 2% along with the broader cryptocurrency market. Euler Labs tweeted,
“After successful negotiations, all recoverable funds taken from the Euler protocol on March 13 have now been successfully returned by the exploiter.”
In a separate incident, a large portion of the $573,000 Allbridge hack has been returned following the hacker accepted the platform’s offer of a white hat bounty and failed to pursue legal action. On April 3, Allbridge announced that the company had received a message from an individual stating that they had been returned nearly 1,500 BNB worth regarding USD 465.000.
Upon receiving the stolen funds, Allbridge explained that all the “BNB received» were converted to the stablecoin Binance USD (BUSD) to be used as compensation. Furthermore, the platform stated that there is a second hacker who was involved in the same exploit, but has not yet contacted him. Allbridge said,
“We ask the second operator to get in touch and discuss the return.”
Update on the exploit
1/ Our team was contacted by the owner of
1500 BNB was returned to our team. The remaining funds will be considered a white hat bounty to this person.
— Allbridge (@Allbridge_io) April 3, 2023
NEW EMERGING TREND
Earlier this year, the hacker behind the exploit on decentralized financial lending (DeFi) platform Tender.fi, returned the stolen funds for a $97,000 reward en Ethereum (ETH).
We have come to an agreement with the White Hat, an on chain transaction was sent with an attached message that contains the terms of this agreement.
— Tender.fi (@Tender_fi) March 7, 2023
This seems to be a new emerging trend where hackers have started returning ill-gotten funds in exchange for a go-ahead from the law and a hefty reward by the project developers. As security agencies around the world tighten their policies to regulate cryptocurrencies, hackers may be forced to return their loot for fear of being identified and arrested.
