Polygon regains control of its Discord after hack, scam link scare

The Polygon Discord channel was reportedly compromised on Saturday, Aug. 24, but the blockchain platform’s brass regained access after roughly four hours.

The initial hack prompted Polygon Polygon (MATIC) chief information security officer Mudit Gupta to issue a warning on X.com, warning users not to click on “any links” in the official Discord channel until further notice.

The incident raised concerns among Polygon users, with one member going by the X handle shadabk2005 saying that scam links were being posted on the channel.

No further information regarding the incident was forthcoming.

Roughly four hours later, Gupta made an update to his original post, informing users that the Polygon team had “regained control” of the channel and were rectifying changes made by the hackers to guard against a repeat attack.

See below.

Discord is a free online messaging app that has gained popularity among crypto communities, alongside X, Telegram and Reddit. Projects regularly use the platform to share important information, and scammers seem to have taken note. 

Attacks on the platform are more frequent, with crypto.news reporting several such incidents.

In July, Ethereum (ETH) liquid restaking platform Renzo lost ownership of its Discord channel to bad actors. At the time, it was unclear whether anyone lost any funds as a result of the hack. 

In another incident, hackers added a fake Discord link on the website of security auditing firm CertiK. According to those who discovered the trick, the link led to a fake Discord server hosting malicious software designed to drain funds from users’ wallets. 

In September 2023, CertiK reported that scammers made off with more than $6 million from attacks instigated through compromised crypto Discord channels. The attackers mostly used the channels to spam fake token airdrops, with the airdrop links containing phishing links.