Euler hacker offers to negotiate return of funds

A hacker who recently exploited Euler Finance is attempting to arrange the return of stolen funds, as seen in an on-chain message on March 20.

Hacker reaches out to Euler Finance

Records from Etherscan show that the hacker sent an Ethereum transaction to Euler Finance’s deployer contract. That message read:

“We want to make this easy on all those affected. No intention of keeping what is not ours. Setting up secure communication. Let us come to an agreement.”

The text can be found in the input data field and is formatted in hexadecimal code. It only be read after it is converted to the UTF-8 format.

Euler Finance has not publicly acknowledged the hacker’s offer, though reports from Decrypt suggest that the company is aware of the message.

The project previously offered a $1 million bounty on March 16, demanding that the attacker return 90% of the funds within 24 hours. Euler Finance similarly attempted to communicate with the attacker on-chain.

Where are the stolen funds?

Euler Finance was initially hacked on March 13 for nearly $200 million. The attacker stole various cryptocurrencies, including DAI, USDC, WBTC, and other assets. The project said that it was aware of the hack at the time and was working with law enforcement.

On March 16, days after the incident, the attacker moved 1,000 ETH ($1.7 million) through Tornado Cash while also returning a small portion of the stolen funds to an individual user. Later, on March 17, the attacker sent 100 ETH ($170,000) to an address linked to an earlier attack that was carried out against Ronin Bridge in March 2022.

Transactions observed by Arkham Intelligence on March 18 also suggest that the attacker transferred 3,000 ETH ($5.4 million) back to Euler Finance itself. Those transfers, combined with today’s message, suggest that the attacker is willing to cooperate.

Euler Finance is a decentralized finance lending and borrowing platform built on Ethereum.

Though the crisis caused Euler Finance’s native token to…