DeFi Protocol SafeMoon Hacker Agrees to Return 80% of Stolen Funds

• On March 29 the hacker said they had mistakenly emptied the funds.
• The attacker gave an anonymous Outlook email address for communication.

SafeMoon is a protocol for decentralized finance (DeFi) built on BNB Chain. On March 28, hackers stole 27,000 BNB, valued at about $8.9 million. According to a blockchain message published by SafeMoon on April 18, the attacker responsible for the theft of $8.9 million in BNB has promised to refund 80% of the stolen funds.

On April 18 at 1:19 p.m. UTC, an attacker’s address was used as the beneficiary in a transaction uploaded to the BNB network from the SafeMoon Deployer account. Unicode Transformation Format (UTF-8) was used for the encoded message included in the transaction.

The message read:

“SafeMoon has reached an agreement with the party currently holding the funds. Specifically, SafeMoon has agreed to accept 80 percent of the amount returned, with the other party retaining the balance as a bounty. SafeMoon has further agreed not to file any legal actions against them. After careful consideration of the circumstances, it is believed this is in the best interest of SafeMoon and the community.”

Lack of Bounty Programs

This encrypted message is the latest in a string of exchanges between the SafeMoon team and the attacker during mediation efforts. On March 29 the hacker said they had mistakenly emptied the funds.

On the same day, the team replied, requesting that the attacker provide a Telegram handle. Instead of a Telegram handle, the attacker gave an anonymous Outlook email address. And then they said, “Email message sent. 12:33 UTC.” After the April 18 confirmation message, the two parties did not exchange any more blockchain-based communications. Experts argue over the lack of bounty programs to avoid such incidents.

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