By claiming to be good hackers, the brothers convinced the judge that they acted in good faith in exchange for payment.
On October 26, a Paris court acquitted two hacker brothers accused of causing 44 million reais ($8.3 million) worth of cryptocurrency losses in an attack on DeFi protocol Platypus Finance. A publication on Le Monde's website said the exploration took place in February this year.
According to the publication, brothers Mohammed M. and Benamar M. were released from prison because they admitted the truth and their defense convinced the judge that they were hackers with good intentions ("white hats" or "white hackers" in English ).
They said they wanted to recover the promised funds from the platform and return them later, so they would receive a reward of about 10% for discovering a flaw in the protocol that allowed access to the Platypus Finance pool.
Mohammed, 22, claimed he discovered the flaw by accident while "trying to understand how the protocol worked," Le Monde reported.
As he looked at the structure of the Platypus loan system, he discovered a bug in the source code for what he called the “emergency withdrawal” feature.
The pool contained a shared reserve of cryptocurrencies and was available to investors who wanted to trade digital assets. That day, Mohammed took advantage of a code error and deleted all the shipments, the newspaper said.
However, according to The Block, Mohammed mistakenly locked up millions of dollars in stolen funds and only recovered about $270,000; Platypus successfully redeemed $2.4 million in USDC.
The hack was also made public in a publication by blockchain security firm CertiK.
After learning about the breach, a team at cryptocurrency brokerage Binance contacted French authorities investigating cybercrime. The agency then tracked down the brothers through their financial transactions.
They were detained on February 24 in the Seine-Saint-Denis region. Mohammed is accused of illegal data access, fraud and money laundering, while Benamar is accused of receiving stolen funds.
New hacking attack
On October 12, Platypus’ platform was hacked again and lost about $2.2 million in another instant loan attack. Once the hack was discovered, the team immediately announced the suspension of services for all mining pools.
