Why Poly Network Asked Hacker To Become Its Chief Security Advisor

The Poly Network saga continues and has taken another unexpected turn. Per an official post, the team behind the project has offered the hacker, also known as “Mr. White Hat”, a position within the network as Chief Security Advisor.

As Bitcoinist reported, Mr. White Hat was responsible for carrying out the “biggest hack in DeFi” after stealing over $600 million from Poly Network. This multi-chain platform has a product that allows users to interact with several blockchains, such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and others.

According to Mr. White Hat himself, he perpetrated the attack on Poly Network to “save the funds” and bring attention to a critical vulnerability. The hacker felt that to alert the team via a traditional communication channel could have created incentives for a third party to plan an inside attack.

The attacker has denied that his motivations are economical. As Poly Network confirmed, they have maintained communication with Mr. White Hat, the hacker unexpectedly agreed to return the stolen funds to a multi-signature address.

The team only waits for the private keys to “return full asset control back to the users”. This has taken more time than expected seems the hackers appear to still have concerns about the network’s security.

Poly Network claims that they are “working with organizations” to increase security levels. In this way, they will present users with a “robust and secure system fully prepared for” recovery and revamp.

However, they believe that the funds must be returned to ensure that the network can resume normal operations. Thus, they are willing to include Mr. White Hat in their plans:

(…) to extend our thanks and encourage Mr. White Hat to continue contributing to security advancement in the blockchain world together with Poly Network, we cordially invite Mr. White Hat to be the Chief Security Advisor of Poly Network.

No Legal Consequences And A Bounty For The Poly Network Hacker

In order to make the offer more attractive, Poly Network clarified that their attacker will not be subject to legal consequences. The team believes that the hacker shares their “vision to build a robust distributed system”.

As it has been reported on several occasions, Poly Network has offered Mr. White Hat a $500,000 bounty. The hacker has allegedly not accepted the money, reiterating that he doesn’t have financial motivations, but he might use it to contribute to blockchain security.

The team claims that the bounty will be transferred to an address indicated by the hacker to use “at his own discretion for the cause of cybersecurity”. Additionally, they expressed their gratitude towards the hacker:

(…) we are grateful for Mr. White Hat’s outstanding contribution to Poly Network’s security enhancements. While there were certain misunderstandings in the beginning due to poor communication channels, we now understand Mr. White Hat’s vision for Defi and the crypto world.

At the time of writing, Ethereum trades at $3,169 with a 1.5% loss in the daily chart.