Image: © Pavel Ignatov/Stock.adobe.com
The platform said it took less than 24 hours for investigators to get leads and that the incident serves as a warning to ‘all would-be black hats’.
In a bizarre ending to the recent Euler Finance hack, the perpetrator has returned all of the stolen assets worth nearly $200m to the UK crypto platform.
Euler Finance confirmed on Twitter that the exploiter returned all of the “recoverable stolen assets” to its treasury. The platform lost roughly $197m in cryptocurrency last month when it was hit with a flash loan attack.
Since then, the UK-based company was quiet in its communications, even after transactions showed the hacker returned a large portion of the funds to the platform at the end of March.
Now, Euler Finance has revealed that the company was able to trace the attacker and began public and “eventually private” lines of communication with the hacker.
“During this time it was essential that all sources of information about the investigation were closed off,” Euler Finance said.
As others have pointed out, the Euler recovery is a reminder to all would-be black hats that it is very difficult to remain anonymous online if there’s a sufficiently skilled and motivated group of people looking for you.
— Euler Labs (@eulerfinance) April 4, 2023
The company said the hacker was convinced to do the right thing after “a period of lengthy negotiation” and said it quickly became clear the exploiter had made a “potentially life-changing mistake”.
The investigation into finding the hacker appeared to have panicked the perpetrator, as apology messages were included in the transactions back to Euler Finance.
“The Euler recovery is a reminder to all would-be black hats that it is very difficult to remain anonymous online if there’s a sufficiently skilled and motivated group of people looking for you,” the company said.
“It took less than 24 hours after the attack before a significant amount of information and a number of leads had been gathered by those investigating.”
Euler Finance said its current focus is to restore user deposits and make sure those affected can claim back their stolen assets “as soon as possible”.
“The claim calculations are not necessarily simple and a little more patience will likely be needed before assets can be claimed by their rightful owners,” Euler Finance said. “However, a proposal will be published shortly, including an outline.”
10 things you need to know direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of essential sci-tech news.
