Quote:Attackers reportedly stole $600 million from the cryptocurrency platform Poly Network, in what experts say is one of the largest crypto heists to date.
 
Poly Network, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform based in China, publicly acknowledged that an attacker “exploited a vulnerability” that allowed them to assign themselves the ownership of money processed through the platform.
 
According to a statement made on Wednesday by the company, attackers abused the function “_executeCrossChainTx”. The company said that this specific function dictates the “between contract calls” and is tied to interoperability needed to communicate between independent blockchains.

A blockchain is a specific type of database. When used in the context of cryptocurrency, it serves as a ledger for irreversible transactions.
 
“The attacker use this function to pass in carefully constructed data to modify the keeper of the EthCrossChainData contract,” Poly Network stated.
 
Attackers snatched up a reported $611 million in digital tokens. Tokens (or crypto tokens) represent an asset that resides on a blockchain. Unlike a crypto coin, a token is associated with a specific blockchain (or ledger). In this case, it was Poly Network’s platform that was used to steal Ethereum (ETH) and BowsCoin (BSC) tokens.