Shezmu Recovers Millions in Stolen Cryptos After Negotiating with Hacker

• Shezmu has recovered nearly all the funds it recently lost to a hack.
• The crypto lender suffered an exploit on Friday.
• The hacker demanded a higher bounty than the initial offer to return the stolen cryptos.

Crypto lender Shezmu has successfully recovered nearly $5 million in digital assets a few hours after losing the funds to a hacking incident.

The hack on Shezmu came to light late Friday when Fuzzland co-founder Chaofan Shou alerted the X crypto community to a security breach in one of the protocol’s vaults. Noting that the incident was either a rug pull or a genuine hack, Shou confirmed that the attacker stole about $4.9 million worth of ShezUSD. ShezUSD is Shezmu’s stablecoin issued against popular non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and yield-bearing ERC-20 collaterals.

Shezmu Springs into Action Post-Hack

About two hours after asserting one of its ShezUSD vaults had been exploited, Shezmu reached out to the hacker with an offer , urging them to return the stolen funds “within the next 24 hours” in exchange for a 10% bounty and treatment of the security breach as a white-hat incident.

Noting that the hacker’s wallet was linked to a KYC exchange, Shezmu warned that it would report the matter to relevant authorities if no action were taken within a day. The caution seemed to have motivated the hacker, who responded to the message hours later and demanded a higher bounty, which Shezmu agreed to.

“Hi there - thanks for reaching out. Sure we can talk about the refund, but only considering 20% as bounty. Btw I have no problem with that KYC,” the hacker wrote in an on-chain message.

While the hacker didn’t send another message after the first one, the Shezmu team issued two updates later, confirming that it had recovered 288.1 Ether (ETH) and 137 Wrapped Ether (WETH).

The protocol urged users to avoid interacting with Oasis as it tried to recover the remaining funds.

Read about BingX’s schedule for withdrawal resumption post-hack:
BingX to Resume Withdrawals for Select Cryptos in the “Next 1-2 Weeks”

Stay updated on how 9B SHIB was recently stolen from a major CEX:
9B SHIB Stolen from Major CEX as Exchange Reserve Hits Bottom