Cryptocurrency [loss] $2M+

"'Critical' Polygon bug put $24 billion in tokens at risk until recent hard fork"

2021-12-04 [vendor] Polygon [chain] polygon
Primary Source ↗
Financial Loss $2.1M (2,068,130 USD)
Blockchain(s) Polygon

Incident Details

Polygon lost a bit over $2 million after a hacker exploited a bug involving a lack of balance/allowance check in their MRC20 contract. Polygon had been in the process of releasing a patch for the vulnerability, which had been reported by a white-hat hacker, and released an emergency upgrade the following day. The silent, zero-warning hard fork raised some eyebrows, and Polygon didn’t release details until several weeks later. Polygon ultimately paid about $3.5 million in bug bounties to two white-hat hackers who submitted reports, which was far less than the total value of Polygon’s $MATIC tokens, all 9.2 billion of which (worth around $24 billion) could have been stolen by an attacker using this vulnerability.

Total loss estimated at $2,068,130.

Technical Details

Initial Attack Vector
Software bug / unintentional loss
Vendor / Product
Polygon

Timeline

  1. 2021-12-04 Breach occurred
  2. 2021-12-04 Publicly disclosed