The hacker behind the biggest DeFi hack in 2023 has returned his stash of stolen crypto to Euler Finance.
In an announcement on Monday, Euler Finance said they had successfully recovered all the funds stolen in the March 13 exploit.
Because the exploiter did the right thing and returned the funds, and the $1 million reward campaign launched by the Euler Foundation will no longer be accepting new information.
Full details to follow tomorrow.
— Euler Labs🛢️🇬🇧 (@eulerfinance) April 3, 2023
Last month, the hacker orchestrated a flash loan exploit on non-custodial lending protocol Euler Finance, stealing nearly $200 million worth of DAI, wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), staked Ether (stETH) and USDC.
The hacker appeared unremorseful at first, ignoring a blockchain message from the Euler team calling for the immediate return of 90% of stolen funds in return for a halt in the investigation as to his whereabouts.
However, a day later, he seemingly had a change of heart and proceeded to engage in talks with the Euler team through encrypted blockchain messages and return small batches of the stolen funds.
His tone turned fully apologetic last week, when he returned 7,000 ETH to the Euler deployer contract, with a message attached conveying his apology.
“Jacob here. I don’t think what I say will help me in any way but I still want to say it. I f**d up,” wrote the hacker in a transaction-embedded message on March 28.
“I didn’t want to, but I messed with others’ money, others’ jobs, others’ lives. I really f**d up. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean all that. I really didn’t f**g mean all that. Forgive me,” said the hacker, who now identifies as Jacob.
After returning $120 million worth of his spoils from the Euler exploit, the hacker said in a blockchain message that he intends to return the funds “ASAP” and the delay was on account of him “looking after his safety.”
According to blockchain data from Arkham Intelligence, the exploiter’s crypto address transferred the remaining 10,580 ETH worth around $19 million to Euler on Monday.
“do urself a favor and just be a whitehat. almost no one gets away with it,” tweeted Scott Lewis, co-founder of DeFi Pulse.
