• IoTeX offers cross-bridge hackers 10% bounty if they return $4.4 million within 48 hours Raullen Chai, IoTeX co-founder and CEO, told CoinDesk he would not press charges if the stolen assets or its equivalent is returned within 48 hours. • What to know: IoTeX is offering a 10% white-hat bounty, about $440,000, and a promise not to pursue legal action if hackers return roughly $4.4 million stolen from its ioTube cross-chain bridge within 48 hours. • 21 exploit stemmed from a compromised validator owner private key on the Ethereum side of the ioTube bridge, which IoTeX and outside experts describe as an operational security failure rather than a flaw in the Layer 1 blockchain or its smart contracts. • IoTeX traced the stolen funds across chains, identified bitcoin addresses holding about 66.6 BTC, and is rolling out a mainnet upgrade with a default blacklist of malicious addresses, but experts warn that assets already swapped and bridged may be difficult or unlikely to recover. • In this article IoTeX offered a 10% white-hat bounty to the hacker or hackers who exploited a private key on its cross-chain bridge ioTube, siphoning millions of dollars, in exchange for the voluntary return of funds within 48 hours. • With this move, IoTeX is offering the $440,000 if the malicious actor or actors return roughly $4.4 million they stole, according to anIoTeX X post, to which IoTeX co-founder and CEO Raullen Chai pointed “as a source of truth” on Monday.

Article Summaries:

  • IoTeX has offered a 10 % bounty-about $440,000-to any hacker who returns the roughly $4.4 million stolen from its ioTube cross‑chain bridge within 48 hours. Co‑founder Raullen Chai said the company would not pursue legal action or share identifying information if the funds are returned. The Feb. 21 exploit stemmed from a compromised validator‑owner private key on the Ethereum side of the bridge, an operational security failure rather than a flaw in IoTeX’s Layer 1. IoTeX traced the stolen assets, flagged exchange deposits, and is rolling out a mainnet upgrade with a default blacklist of malicious addresses. The incident caused the IOTX token to fall about 22 % before partially rebounding.

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