Polygon’s Discord channel hacked, team works to regain control

Polygon, one of the leading blockchain platforms, has experienced a significant security crisis as its community Discord channel has been compromised. 

Mudit Gupta, Polygon’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), confirmed the breach and urged users to avoid clicking on any links shared within the Discord channel until the situation is fully resolved. 

Polygon users fall prey

This incident has raised serious concerns about the security measures in place, even as Gupta stated that all privileged accounts had two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled.

Discord, a popular communication platform for cryptocurrency communities, has been increasingly targeted by cybercriminals due to the valuable information and assets often discussed or managed through these channels.

The implications of the breach are already being felt by the community. A Polygon user, identified as @shadabk2005, took to the X platform to warn others of the ongoing situation. 

According to the user, the support channel on Polygon’s Discord was flooded with people seeking help, only to be misled by scammers posing as legitimate support agents. “There are scam links being posted in the announcements channel,…” the user noted, adding that he was given a timeout for trying to highlight the issue.

The severity of the attack became even more apparent when another user, @ValidatorK, reported a loss of $150,000 worth of Ethereum from his pool. The funds were lost in one fell swoop following an interaction with what appeared to be an official announcement on Polygon’s Discord. 

Discord hacks

The attack on Polygon’s Discord is the latest in a series of high-profile breaches that have plagued the crypto community.

Related: Polygon launches upgraded ZK proving system Plonky3

On March 25, 2023, blockchain security firm CetriK highlighted a phishing scam circulating on the Arbitrum Discord server. The scam, believed to have been orchestrated through a hacked developer account, involved a fake announcement containing a malicious link. 

Similarly, on May 5, 2024, the Gnus.AI artificial intelligence network was victim to a Discord-related exploit, resulting in a loss of approximately $1.27 million. These incidents serve as a stark reminder of the growing threats facing crypto platforms and the devastating impact of successful cyberattacks.

The timing of this breach is particularly concerning for Polygon, which is currently undergoing a significant network upgrade. 

The platform plans to replace its original MATIC token with POL tokens as part of an upgrade scheduled for Sept. 4. The POL upgrade is designed to expand the utility of Polygon’s native token and power its growing network of aggregated blockchains, known as AggLayer.

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