It took almost eight hours for the Munchables developer, initially identified as the Munchables hacker, to have a change of heart and return $62.8 million worth of Ether stolen in a hack, without demanding any ransom.

The incident, which occurred on March 26 around 9:30 pm UTC, drained over 17,400 ETH from the Ethereum-based nonfungible token (NFT) game Munchables. Munchables, in collaboration with blockchain investigators like PeckShield and ZachXBT, tracked the stolen funds to intercept them.

ZachXBT revealed that the hack was carried out by a North Korean developer hired by the Munchables team under the alias “Werewolves0943.” By March 27, 4:40 am UTC, Munchables confirmed the hacker was one of its developers.

An hour of negotiations led to the developer agreeing to return the funds, with Munchables stating that all relevant private keys were shared for fund recovery. The creator of the Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Blast, known as Pacman, expressed gratitude to ZachXBT for support, as the ex-Munchables developer returned the funds without any ransom.

Pacman will collaborate with the Munchables team to redistribute the recovered funds. Meanwhile, victims of the hack are cautioned to follow official communications to avoid refund scams.

This exploit came shortly after a hacker stole approximately $24,000 from four DeFi aggregator ParaSwap addresses. ParaSwap, with the help of white hat hackers, managed to recover the funds and began refunding users, resolving the issue by revoking permissions for the vulnerable AugustusV6 smart contract.

In total, 386 addresses were affected by the ParaSwap vulnerability, with 213 addresses yet to revoke allowances for the flawed contract as of March 25.