Ethereum Optimism Thief Returns $16M in Stolen Tokens

The attacker additionally despatched 1 million OP to Vitalik Buterin and retained 2 million tokens as a bounty reward. 

Optimism Attacker Offers Again Loot

The attacker who stole 20 million OP tokens due to a Wintermute error has returned nearly all of their spoils, Optimism has confirmed. 

Hey people—within the curiosity of transparency (😉,😅), the deal with has returned a majority of the OP, and @wintermute_t has dedicated to reimbursing the Optimism Basis for the remaining 2mm OP, which was stored as a bounty.https://t.co/jtElgPdNPk

— Optimism (✨🔴_🔴✨) (@optimismPBC) June 10, 2022

The Ethereum Layer 2 answer posted an update Friday confirming that the attacker behind the incident had returned 17 million of the 20 million OP tokens it stole this week. On Wednesday, Optimism introduced that Wintermute had inadvertently misplaced 20 million OP tokens on account of an Ethereum pockets error. 

Optimism had granted the funds to the liquidity provisioning service to assist market contributors seeking to commerce the recently-launched OP token on centralized exchanges. Nonetheless, when Wintermute deployed a Gnosis Secure pockets on Ethereum mainnet with out checking that it had been deployed on Optimism, an attacker efficiently took management of the pockets on Layer 2 and stole the funds. 

On-chain data exhibits that the attacker started returning the funds to Optimism’s multi-signature pockets in a sequence of transactions late Friday afternoon. In addition they despatched 1 million tokens to Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin Thursday, which Optimism has confirmed “is being recovered.” Apparently, the attacker additionally left a message to Buterin in an Ethereum transaction. They wrote: 

“Whats up, Vitalik, I imagine in you, simply wish to know your opinion on this. BTW, assist to confirm the return deal with and I’ll return the remaining after you. And hi there Wintermute, sorry, I solely have 18M and that is what I can return. Keep Optimistic!”

With 18 million tokens despatched to Optimism and Buterin, that leaves the attacker with a 2 million OP bounty. At present costs, the returned funds are value about $16.38 million, whereas the attacker’s bounty is well worth the equal of $1.82 million. In accordance with Optimism’s announcement, Wintermute has agreed to reimburse the Layer 2 community for the two million OP bounty. 

OP bounced 9.8% at this time regardless of a decline throughout the broader market. Per data from CoinGecko, it’s presently altering arms for about $0.91. 

Disclosure: On the time of writing, the writer of this piece owned ETH and several other different cryptocurrencies.