Nomad, a cryptocurrency service, is offering a $200 million "bounty" to hackers who return stolen funds.

 

Nomad, a cryptocurrency service, is offering a $200 million "bounty" to hackers who return stolen funds.

Nomad, a cryptocurrency service, is offering a "reward" to anyone who returns funds stolen from the company on Monday in a nearly $200 million heist.

Nomad has stated that it will pay up to 10% of digital funds stolen by hackers and has promised not to sue parties who return at least 90% of the funds.

"The most important aspect of cryptocurrency is the community, and our ultimate goal is to recover users' funds," said Nomad CEO Pranay Mohan in a statement. "To support this effort, we will consider any party that returns 90% or more of the funds exploited to be white hats." White hats will not be prosecuted."

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The Nomad attack began on Monday and lasted until Tuesday morning, with hackers draining the virtual budget in a matter of hours. The corporation stated that it has recovered $20 million.

Nomad operates a blockchain bridge, which allows humans to transport tokens from one blockchain to another, thereby resolving the issue of cryptocurrency interoperability. However, those technologically complex offerings were vulnerable to attacks, with hackers exploiting security flaws to steal more than $1 billion in property to date in 2022, according to forensics firm Elliptic.

A security researcher described the Nomad attack on Twitter as "chaotic" and "all against all," with people swarming over empty accounts after discovering a security flaw that allowed them to replace a valid transaction request when they received a valid one. the address of the other person with your own, effectively diverting assets to your own accounts

"Copycats posing as Nomad and providing fraudulent addresses to fundraise," according to Nomad.

The theft follows the Harmony blockchain bridge hack in June, which resulted in a $100 million loss. These bridges are considered particularly vulnerable to attack, in part due to their relative newness and inevitable bugs, and are thus frequently targeted by cybercriminals. The $320 million wormhole hack in February and the $600 million+ Ronin Network hack in March were both recent hacks.

According to Elliptic, bridges are vulnerable to theft because they contain a large amount of cryptocurrency, making them a target for hackers, as well as a lack of decentralization and oversight. Some bridges don't require many signatures to approve a transaction, and some services have made security sacrifices as they've evolved quickly, according to the group.