Near Intents recovered the full $3.8 million stolen in a Thursday exploit, general manager Alex Shevchenko announced Friday, ending the team's investigation into the incident.
The rapid recovery followed Shevchenko's public message to the attacker stating "We have identified you, sir" and giving them 48 hours to return the funds. An on-chain message attributed to the exploiter acknowledged the wrongdoing, saying "We've returned all the funds, we were in the wrong," and encouraged others to use bug bounties instead of exploiting vulnerabilities.
How the Exploit Occurred
Near Intents halted service Thursday after a bug in how its Omni deposit and withdrawal layer interacted with its main smart contract allowed an attacker to siphon funds. According to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT, the stolen funds were sent to KuCoin and bridged to Bitcoin.
About Near Intents
Near Intents is a cross-chain swap service that allows users to swap tokens across 35 blockchains by specifying their desired trade, with market makers competing to fill orders. The service has processed more than $30 billion in swaps to date.
The team had pledged to compensate users in full and reported the incident to law enforcement. The exploit occurred days after Bitwise launched a spot NEAR ETF, and followed Near Intents' blocking of a $50 million swap attempt by the hacker responsible for the roughly $387.5 million Bitget breach, which has been attributed to North Korea.
