IoTeX offers cross-bridge hackers 10% bounty if they return $4.4 million within 48 hours

Raullen Chai, IoTeX co-founder and CEO, told CoinDesk he would not press charges if the stolen assets or its equivalent is returned within 48 hours. What to know : IoTeX is offering a 10% white-hat bounty, about $440,000, and a promise not to pursue legal action if hackers return roughly $4.4 million stolen from its ioTube cross-chain bridge within 48 hours. The Feb. 21 exploit stemmed from a compromised validator owner private key on the Ethereum side of the ioTube bridge, which IoTeX and outside experts describe as an operational security failure rather than a flaw in the Layer 1 blockchain or its smart contracts. IoTeX traced the stolen funds across chains, identified bitcoin addresses holding about 66.6 BTC, and is rolling out a mainnet upgrade with a default blacklist of malicious addresses, but experts warn that assets already swapped and bridged may be difficult or unlikely to recover.