Polygon experienced a security breach today when hackers took control of its community Discord channel for about three hours. During the incident, scammers infiltrated the channel and targeted users, but the situation has now been resolved.

Mudit Gupta, Polygon’s Chief Information Security Officer, confirmed that the team has fully regained control of the Discord server and is working to reverse the changes made by the hacker.

Hack Details

The breach was initially detected by Polygon users who noticed unusual activity on the Discord channel. Scammers, pretending to be legitimate support agents, flooded the support channel with malicious links and misleading information.

One community member took to social media platform X to warn others, pointing out scam links in the announcements channel. The user stated:

"I saw many people asking for help in support, and scammers pretending to assist, only to mislead them."

For his efforts to warn the community, the user was temporarily banned by channel moderators.

In a more serious case, another user, "ValidatorK," reported losing $150,000 worth of Ether (ETH) after interacting with what seemed to be an official announcement.

The attack has raised concerns about Polygon's security protocols, despite Gupta’s assurance that all privileged accounts on the server had two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled.

The timing of the breach was particularly troubling for Polygon, as it occurred during the platform’s ongoing network upgrade. Polygon is set to replace its native token MATIC with the new POL token on September 4.

Increasing Trend of Discord Hacks

Discord channel hacks have become increasingly common among hackers, especially given the platform's popularity in the crypto community. Since Discord channels often disseminate valuable information or manage assets, they have become a lucrative target for cybercriminals.

Polygon’s Discord breach is the latest in a series of similar attacks. On March 25, 2023, the Arbitrum Discord server was compromised, with hackers posting a phishing link on the official channel.

Similarly, on May 5, Gnus.AI, an artificial intelligence network, suffered a loss of approximately $1.27 million following a similar breach of its Discord server.