Sentiment Recovers Stolen Funds with Bounty

Lending protocol A recent hacking incident using Sentiment resulted in the perpetrator stealing close to one million dollars. However, because to a reward of $95,000 that was offered to the hacker, the protocol was successful in recovering the stolen cash. Through the use of the Arbitrum blockchain, Sentiment spoke with the hacker, imploring them to “do the right thing” and restore the cash by April 6 at the latest. In addition, the policy guaranteed the same payment to anybody who was able to assist in determining who was responsible for the crime and bringing them to justice.

After monitoring the situation, the creator of MetaMask, Taylor Monahan, made the announcement that the hacker had returned 414 ether, which is equivalent to around $771,000 at the current exchange rate. After some time had passed, the hacker sent a further 51.75 ETH to the recovery address provided by Sentiment. The protocol said unequivocally that it had been successful in acquiring the monies and that the problem had been fixed.

On April 4, a hack was carried out, and it is thought that it was carried out as a consequence of a re-entry assault or a flaw. As was stated by a few members of the community, this episode underscores how critically important it is for businesses to take bug bounties seriously. Even one of the members gave the hacker kudos for “taking it by force” with their efforts. On the other hand, a different user of Twitter voiced their disapproval of the event, labeling it as “a bug bounty with a criminal step,” and asking businesses to provide greater and more open bug bounties.

Comparisons have been made between this attack and the recent one that occurred at Euler Finance, in which the Ethereum protocol awarded a reward to a hacker who returned almost 90% of the assets that had been taken. The hacker returned over 176.4 million dollars in digital assets while keeping roughly $20 million for themselves. Because of this occurrence, the significance of bug bounties as a method for resolving vulnerabilities in protocols for decentralized financial transactions has been further highlighted.

It is very necessary for businesses to take bug bounties seriously and provide awards that encourage ethical conduct in their employees. The usefulness of this strategy was recently shown by the fact that Sentiment was successful in regaining its data. Moving ahead, it is probable that other organizations will adopt similar tactics to manage possible security breaches in their systems. This will increase the likelihood that these breaches will occur.