Crypto Hacker Who Drained $42,000,000 From GMX Goes White Hat, Returns Funds in Exchange for $5,000,000 Bounty

A crypto hacker who stole tens of millions of dollars from the decentralized crypto perpetuals exchange GMX (GMX) is turning white hat by returning the stolen funds to collect a bounty.

In a new thread on the social media platform X, GMX says the hacker who stole $42 million worth of crypto assets earlier this week from its Arbitrum (ARB)-based liquidity pool is returning the funds and collecting a $5 million reward.

“A potential exploitable amount of $42 million belonging to GLP holders was secured. After payment of a $5 million bounty to the user, the remaining funds are now safely in the GMX Security Multisig.

Contributors are working on a proposed distribution plan for presentation to the GMX DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and will share more information shortly.”

According to previous reports, the hacker struck on July 9th and transferred part of the funds to an unknown wallet. At the time, GMX said the exploit was limited to GMXV1 and that V2, its markets and liquidity pools, as well as the ecosystem’s native asset, were unaffected.

In its report on the incident, GMX says the exploit was a re-entrancy attack, or a type of hack that affects smart contracts by taking advantage of a vulnerability presented when a smart contract makes a call to another before updating itself, leaving open the possibility for an external malicious contract to enter in.

News of the returned fund sent GMX skyrocketing, as the digital asset is trading for $13.36 at time of writing, an 18.4% increase during the last 24 hours.

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