A peace offer from developers failed to soften the exploiter’s stance. A wallet associated with the Cysic bridge hack transferred 300 ETH and 30.4 BNB to transaction mixing platform Tornado Cash on Friday, according to monitoring data from blockchain security firm PeckShield.
The asset transfer involved stolen funds valued at approximately $744,000 in ETH and BNB. Rather than responding to the official bounty offer, the attacker opted to sever the on-chain transaction trail using the privacy protocol.
10 Percent Bounty Offer Rejected
Prior to the laundering transactions, the Cysic Foundation had extended a 10% white hat bounty offer. Under the proposal, the foundation requested that the hacker return 275.872 ETH, valued at around $665,000 and representing 90% of the total ETH identified in the breach.
The hacker chose to ignore the opportunity to negotiate. At the time of publication, the balance in the exploiter’s Ethereum wallet stood at only about $45 worth of ETH, indicating that almost all stolen assets had been routed to Tornado Cash contracts.
2.8 Million CYS Tokens Frozen
The incident unfolded when the attacker exploited a vulnerability in the Cysic bridge. The cross-chain bridge flaw was used to illicitly mint 10 million CYS tokens on BNB Smart Chain.
In response to the exploit, the Cysic development team promptly paused bridge operations and blacklisted the hacker’s recipient address. That emergency response successfully froze roughly 2.8 million CYS tokens out of the 10 million newly minted tokens.
Despite the asset losses on the cross-chain bridge, Cysic claimed its mainnet remains secure. The project stated that existing user wallet balances and assets were unaffected by the exploit on BNB Smart Chain.
Fund Recovery Status Remains Unclear
The hacker’s decision to channel all stolen assets into Tornado Cash diminishes the protocol’s prospects of recovering the funds. As of this report, the Cysic Foundation has not responded to a request for comment from Cointelegraph regarding response measures or fund recovery strategies.
For the Web3 ecosystem, the rejection of this white hat offer highlights once more the risks of depositing liquidity into cross-chain bridge infrastructure when attackers choose privacy avenues over official recovery incentives.
Reported via Cointelegraph.
Previously: Hacker Breaches Cysic Bridge Database to Mint 10 Million CYS - Team Manages to Freeze 28%
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
