NEAR Intents Recovers Stolen $3.8 Million After Hacking Attack

The NEAR Intents team reported the full recovery of the stolen $3.8 million, which occurred on October 1 due to a hacking attack related to an exploitation of a bug in the Omni system. The attack targeted an integration error with the BNB Chain, allowing the perpetrator to withdraw the specified amount. NEAR Intents' AI-based security system (SHIELD) responded to the incident by temporarily suspending the platform's operations for an hour to conduct an investigation.

According to NEAR Intents, the hacker was quickly tracked down within 24 hours. NEAR Intents CEO and Aurora Labs co-founder Alex Shevchenko stated that the perpetrator was given 48 hours to return the funds. Shortly after, initial communication with the hacker occurred, who was willing to negotiate. Ultimately, Alex Shevchenko confirmed that all funds were successfully returned: “The $3.8 million from the hacking attack has been fully recovered. We are closing the investigation. We urge using bug bounties instead of disrupting services.” The community's reaction to the return of funds was mixed. The statement to “use bug bounties instead” suggests that the hacker might have justified their actions as security research intended to be presented to the team. Near Protocol founder Ilya Polosukhin also supported this idea, urging security researchers to participate in bug bounties as they exist for a reason.

Despite the successful return of funds, the price of NEAR continued to decline by 16% and broke key support. If such weakness persists, the next support level could be at $4 or $3.5. In the third quarter, losses from crypto hackers increased from $86 million at the end of June to $742 million at the end of September, marking nearly a tenfold increase. Major incidents include the Bitget hacking attack at $388 million and Liquid Network at $320 million. Overall, although the return of funds was a case among a growing number of attacks with limited recoveries, it did not significantly impact the value of NEAR amid the overall market decline.