Top-tier crypto exchange Binance has reportedly managed to retrieve a significant sum of the stolen money from the recent attack against the DeFi protocol Curve Finance. 

Specifically, the current Head of Binance – Changpeng “CZ” Zhao – reportedly took it to Twitter to reveal the exchange’s initiative to have frozen and retrieved $450,000 of the stolen assets – equivalent to over 80 percent of the stolen funds. 

Per Zhao, the hacker attempted to transfer the funds to the exchange via numerous measures but was flagged by Binance. The exchange is putting in efforts to return the funds to their rightful owners at the moment. 

The hack reportedly appeared under the radar of the Curve Finance team on August 9th, leading them to send alerts to users to refrain from using the firm’s website. 

An hour following the alert, the team reportedly disclosed that it managed to identify and fix the problem. However, the attackers were still able to illicitly acquired approximately $537,000 equivalent of USD Coin (USDC) before the issue was resolved.

As revealed by professionals from the blockchain analytics company Elliptic, a hacker compromised the domain name system (DNS) of Curve Finance, which ended with malicious transactions getting signed. 

The experts further stated that the funds were then moved to different exchanges and crypto mixers, in a bid to cover up the trail. Ultimately, the funds were moved to Binance and were caught by its team.

This is not the first instance recently where industry players in the crypto scene put in efforts to return stolen funds. On August 8th, whitehat hackers and researchers receovered an estimated $32.6 million equivalent of USDC, Tether (USDT) and other altcoins to Nomad, following the recent $190 million exploit.