Automated Market Maker winter mutewhat was chopped of $160 million worth of funds, told the hacker to return the stolen funds or face legal action.

In an on-chain message Wintermute was sent to the hacker Thursday, warning whoever it was to accept a $16 million white hat bounty and return the remaining $144 million.

Cooperate or face legal consequences

“We would like to work with you and resolve this matter immediately. Accept the terms of the bounty and return the funds within 24 hours prior to 23:59 September 22 UST while we can still consider this a white hat event for a 10% bounty as offered” , says the message.

The message went on to say that the hacker would be labeled a “white hat” (a term used to describe ethical hackers) if he returned the funds.

This suggests an assurance that no legal action will be taken if the bad actor agrees to the request.

The hacker has approximately 6 hours from this writing to accept the bounty offer.

If the money minus the bonus is not returned within the stipulated time, the Wintermute team will contact the “relevant authorities and channels,” the statement on the chain said.

“If the stolen funds are not returned within the deadline, you will force us to remove our bounty offer and white hat tag.” We will then proceed accordingly with the appropriate authorities and paths,” it said.

Human error attributed to the hack

To to Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoythe theft of around $160 million from the algorithmic market maker service was the result of “human error”.

The attack vector was connected to that ether ETH/USD Vault that Wintermute uses for its on-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) trading activities.

Gaevoy emphasized that this wallet was separate from Wintermute’s centralized funding (CeFi) and over-the-counter (OTC) activities and that none of its internal or counterparty data, nor any of its CeFi or OTC wallets, was corrupted or compromised.

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