Polygon Recovers Discord After Phishing Attack Linked to Fake POL Token

Polygon, the Ethereum Layer-2 network, announced that it has regained control of its Discord channel following a recent hack.

Earlier today, the network reported that the channel was compromised, exposing users to phishing attacks that led to significant losses.

Hackers Leverage Polygon’s MATIC to POL Migration Hype

On August 24, Mudit Gupta, Polygon’s Chief Information Security Officer, reported that the network had regained control of the channel a few hours after its compromise. According to him, the security team was working to reverse any changes made by the hacker. However, he did not disclose specific details about the hack or the recovery process.

Available information shows that attackers exploited the increased interest in Polygon’s upcoming migration from MATIC to the new Polygon Ecosystem Token (POL). They used the compromised Discord channel to promote phishing links disguised as fake POL airdrop announcements, targeting users eager to participate in the migration.

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POL is an upgrade on MATIC designed to be a hyperproductive token that offers valuable services across all chains within the Polygon network, including AggLayer. Polygon announced that the planned migration would begin on September 4.

Meanwhile, the Discord hack raised concerns about Polygon’s security measures. Gupta noted that the network had secured all privileged accounts with two-factor authentication (2FA). This suggests that the breach occurred despite these protections.

Some security experts speculated that the attacker might have socially engineered a team member into providing their Discord token, bypassing all protections. However, Gupta dismissed this theory, suggesting instead that the breach likely occurred through a compromised bot or integration within the channel.

“At this moment, we don’t believe any of our mods were compromised this way. It seems more likely that a bot/integration we had was compromised. Still going through the logs,” Gupta stated.

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Meanwhile, the attack appeared to have caused some losses for members of the channel. One Polygon user identified as ValidatorK reported losing approximately 120,000 MATIC and 30 ETH due to the exploit. ValidatorK criticized the network for not announcing the breach through its official X account, accusing Polygon of poor communication during the incident.

“This was my Ethereum pool until about 33 minutes ago. But it disappeared in an instant through the link provided through the announcement on Polygon’s official Discord,” the victim lamented.