Over 999 Trillion Shiba Inu Tokens Minted in Recent Poly Network Hack

Poly Network has suffered another attack, resulting in the illegitimate minting of several tokens, including 999 trillion Shiba Inu.

Poly Network, a DeFi protocol that facilitates interoperability between different blockchains, has suffered another hack nearly two years after the $600 million attack. The latest hack led to the malicious minting of large amounts of several tokens, including Shiba Inu (SHIB).

In a recent tweet, Chinese blockchain journalist Colin Wu called attention to the exploit. 

Just In: PolyNetwork is suspected to be hacked again. Hackers issued additional huge assets on several chains:

99,999,184 BNB and 10 billion BUSD were issued on Metis, and 999.8127T SHIB was issued on Heco , 87,579,118 COW and 999,998,434 OOE, 636,643,868 STACK, 88,640,563 GM…

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 2, 2023

According to Wu, on-chain data confirms that the hackers were able to manipulate a Poly Network cross-bridge function to mint significant amounts of several tokens across different networks. 

The exploiters minted 999.8 trillion Shiba Inu tokens on the Huobi ECO (HECO) chain. Other tokens minted include 99.9 million BNB and 10 billion BUSD on Metis, an Ethereum-based layer-2 scaling protocol. 999.9 million OOE, 636.6 million STACK, 88.6 million GM, and 2.1 million O3 were minted on Polygon.

They issued millions of other assets on blockchains such as Avalanche and BSC, leading to a substantial increase in their holdings. Per data from Certik, all the minted tokens amounted to $42 billion. 

#CertiKSkynetAlert 🚨

1/ On 1 July, Poly Network was exploited and over $42 billion in assets were issued across multiple blockchains including METIS, HECO, BSC, ETH, FTM, OP, POLY, Gnosis and Avalanche.

See more 👇https://t.co/3L4JwqpcCd

— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) July 2, 2023

Of this $42 billion, the BUSD and BNB minted on Metis blockchain account for $34.5 billion. However, Metis has confirmed there is no need to panic, as the protocol lacks liquidity to execute a sell function for the illegally minted assets. Poly Network has also locked all the issued METIS tokens on BNB Chain.

Nonetheless, Lookonchain revealed that the hackers found liquidity and dumped 94 billion SHIB for 360 ETH. They further got 43 ETH from selling millions of COOK and RFuel. 

MistTrack, a tracking protocol, gave a detailed breakdown of the assets cashed in, which amounted to $4.39 million. According to MistTrack, the attackers leveraged Tornado Cash, Uniswap, Pancakeswap, ChangeNOW, KuCoin, and other platforms for these transactions.

Poly Network Responds

In the aftermath of the event, the Poly Network team disclosed that they would temporarily suspend services on the protocol. The team solicited the involvement and assistance of cybersecurity experts, further asking people with relevant information to contact them.

Dear users,

As we continue to address this situation, we regret to inform you that our services will remain temporarily suspended.
【1/7】

— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) July 2, 2023

The team noted that they are engaging the relevant authorities and law enforcement agencies to investigate the event. They remain hopeful that the individuals involved in the hack would return the funds to avoid legal repercussions.

Poly Network said the attack affected 57 crypto assets across ten blockchain protocols. They provided a detailed spreadsheet of the affected tokens and the respective blockchains. The team has asked the relevant parties to withdraw liquidity from DEXs to stop the attackers from selling the tokens.

Recall that Poly Network had recovered from a massive hack in August 2021, which resulted in a loss of $611 million, as The Crypto Basic disclosed. The attack was regarded as the biggest DeFi hack at the time.