‘White hat’ hackers take $47 million bounty after $320 million crypto theft
Public negotiations between hackers and the operators of the Liquid Network crypto platform ended with the attackers sending back most — but not all — of what they took.
A public, hours-long negotiation between hackers and a cryptocurrency firm on Sunday ended with the attackers keeping $47 million of a $320 million theft as a “reward” for identifying what they said was a bug in the company’s platform.
The trading platform Liquid Network said on Sunday that “purported white-hat hackers” withdrew 4,000 BTC ($320 million) from its own wallet. Blockstream, which runs Liquid, pledged to reach out to the hackers and said deposits and withdrawals were paused. Liquid supports a coin pegged to the price of bitcoin.
Over the next 12 hours, the company negotiated in public on the blockchain with the hackers, who initially wrote, "we are whitehats, contact us on chain" in a message attached to the transaction bridging the $320 million out of Liquid’s account.
Source: https://therecord.media/liquid-network-blockstream-crypto-theft-hackers-keep-reward
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