Polymarket halts trading for an hour after third-party software breach
Prediction-market platform Polymarket paused its international site for about 60 minutes following a compromise of a third-party vendor, and said it will reimburse any users who lost funds.
Polymarket suspended trading on its international platform on Thursday for roughly an hour after discovering that a third-party software provider had been compromised. The outage began around 2 p.m. ET and trading resumed at about 3 p.m. ET.
The company said the breach appeared to originate from the United Kingdom and that it had notified British law-enforcement authorities. In a post on X, Polymarket stated, "anyone who has been impacted will be made whole," and later added, "We’ll make this right and are fully reimbursing all affected traders."
Unverified reports on the platform’s Discord channel indicated that some users’ wallets had been drained. A source familiar with the incident said the attackers accessed funds through software from DebugBear, a web-analytics tool. DebugBear confirmed it was dealing with an "ongoing security incident" at the time.
Crypto-news outlet The Block cited blockchain-analysis firm Arkham as estimating that about $2.65 million in cryptocurrency may have been siphoned from user wallets, though Polymarket did not comment on that figure.
The breach affected only the international site (Polymarket.com); the U.S.-based platform remained operational. Polymarket, valued at $21 billion after a $1 billion investment led by Donald Trump Jr., processes roughly $200 million in daily trading volume.
The company is also reviewing reports of suspicious betting activity related to recent elections in Israel and the upcoming U.S. midterms, according to its head of global intelligence and investigations, Shana Bautista.