Crypto Service Recovers $3.8M After Warning Hacker: 'We Know Who You Are'

Near Intents got all $3.8M back after telling the hacker it had identified them and giving a 48-hour deadline to return the stolen funds.

A crypto company just pulled off something rare: it got all of its stolen money back — simply by telling the thief it knew who they were.

Near Intents, a service that lets people swap different cryptocurrencies across many blockchains, was hacked on Thursday. An attacker exploited (took advantage of) a bug in its software and drained about $3.8 million in crypto.

But the story had a happy ending. Within days, every dollar was returned.

How it happened:

The company's manager, Alex Shevchenko, posted a public message to the hacker: *"We have identified you, sir."*
He gave the attacker 48 hours to return the money.
He shared crypto wallet addresses where the funds could be sent back.
The hacker complied, returning the full $3.8 million.

The attacker even left a message attached to the transaction (an on-chain message — a note recorded permanently on the blockchain). It read: *"We've returned all the funds, we were in the wrong."* The hacker thanked the team for being polite and urged others to use bug bounties — official reward programs where companies pay people to report software flaws instead of stealing from them.

What does Near Intents actually do? It lets users swap tokens across 35 different blockchains. You simply say what you want, and "market makers" (traders who provide the opposite side of your deal) compete to give you the best price. The service has handled over $30 billion in swaps.

The bug was in how one part of the system (its deposit and withdrawal layer) talked to its main smart contract (self-running code that automatically carries out transactions). The company paused the service, promised to repay affected users, and alerted the police.

This was a wild week for the company. Just two days earlier, it had blocked a $50 million attempt by the hacker behind the massive $387.5 million Bitget breach — which investigators have linked to North Korea.

The takeaway: Even in the fast-moving world of crypto, sometimes a direct warning and a deadline can recover stolen millions — and remind hackers that legal reward programs are a safer path.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://decrypt.co/380014/near-intents-recovers-3-8-million-after-48-hour-ultimatum