In two separate incidents, the hackers behind the Euler Finance and the multichain token bridge Allbridge exploits have reportedly agreed to return the loot.
Hackers Return Exploited Funds
On April 4, Euler Labs took to Twitter to reveal that the hacker behind the $200 million attack on Euler Finance has agreed to return all of the stolen funds from the flash loan attack that took place on March 13. This comes hot on the heels after the exploiter returned approximately $10 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) and Dai (DAI), last week.
Following successful negotiations, all of the recoverable funds taken from the Euler protocol on March 13th have now been successfully returned by the exploiter.
— Euler Labs (@eulerfinance) April 3, 2023
Earlier in March, the hacker returned more than 51,000 ETH to Euler which amounted to nearly $120 million after Euler had threatened the perpetrator with legal action, offerring a $1 million reward campaing in order to fix the situation.
Following the news, Euler native token EUL surged significantly. According to CoinMarketCap, EUL is up more than 12% in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, over the past seven days, the digital token gained nearly 2% in tandem with the broader crypto market. Euler Labs tweeted,
“Following successful negotiations, all of the recoverable funds taken from the Euler protocol on March 13th have now been successfully returned by the exploiter.”
In a separate incident, a huge chunk of the $573,000 hack from Allbridge has been returned after the hacker took up the platform’s offer for a white hat bounty and no legal action. On April 3, Allbridge announced the company received a message from an individual noting that almost 1,500 BNB worth around $465,000 were returned to the company.
On receiving the stolen funds, Allbridge explained that all the “received BNB” was then converted to the stablecoin Binance USD (BUSD) to be used as compensation. In addition, the platform stated there is a second hacker who was involved in the same exploit but has not yet made any contact, yet. Allbridge said,
“We ask the second exploiter to reach out and discuss the return,”
Update on the exploit
1/ Our team was contacted by the owner of https://t.co/EW1uxXBQpD.
1500 BNB was returned to our team. The remaining funds will be considered a white hat bounty to this person.
— Allbridge (@Allbridge_io) April 3, 2023
Emerging New Trend
Earlier this year, the hacker behind the exploit of the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Tender.fi, returned the stolen funds for a $97,000 bounty reward in Ethereum (ETH).
We have come to an agreement with the White Hat, an on chain transaction was sent with an attached message that contains the terms of this agreement. https://t.co/9a5IsgID0Q
— Tender.fi (@Tender_fi) March 7, 2023
This seems to be an emerging new trend wherein hackers have begun returning ill-gotten funds in exchange for a clean chit from the law and a sizeable bug bounty reward from the project devs. As enforcement agencies across the world ramp up crypto regulatory policies, hackers may be forced to return their loot in fear of being identified and arrested.
