Polymarket halted trading on its international exchange for nearly an hour on Thursday, October 29, 2026, after a compromised third-party service delivered wallet-draining code; it subsequently said the issue was fixed and promised full reimbursement to affected traders.
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16 Reports traced the attack to a DebugBear monitoring script embedded in Polymarket’s website, while blockchain analysis identified roughly $2.65 million in POL at a suspected attacker address.
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What happened
- Attack route: Analysts reportedly traced the compromise to DebugBear’s Real User Monitoring script, which Polymarket loaded on its frontend.
7 The available excerpts establish a malicious third-party script, but provide insufficient evidence to independently confirm DebugBear’s acknowledgment, the underlying security flaw, or the precise sequence of stealing browser-held credentials, selling positions at steep discounts and transferring the proceeds.
- Trading restrictions: Polymarket entered cancel-only mode—allowing existing orders to be canceled but blocking new buy and sell orders—and paused its relayer.
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14 Trading reportedly reopened around 3 p.m. ET, following approximately an hour’s interruption; CNBC reported that the U.S. platform appeared unaffected.
16 Insufficient evidence in the available excerpts establishes the exact relayer restrictions on token transfers and spending approvals.
Losses and response
- Trader claims: One trader reported losing $800,000 and said a friend lost another $600,000; these are reported claims, not independently verified losses in the available evidence.
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- Blockchain trail: Reports citing Arkham showed the suspected attacker converting USDC.e and USDC into POL, holding approximately $2.65 million worth at one point, and subsequently transferring funds out.
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14 This is a reported wallet-value snapshot, not an established final accounting of victim losses.
- Backup recipient: The technical-analysis result identified a hardcoded fallback recipient in the retrieved script; a supplied screenshot showed about $2.18 million in POL at that address at a different observation point.
6 The excerpts do not conclusively establish the requested attribution of that finding to Hudson Rock.
- Remediation: Polymarket said it had fixed the issue, referred the matter to law enforcement—with CNBC reporting a U.K. referral—and pledged to reimburse all affected traders.
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16 The number of affected users remained unclear in CNBC’s reporting.
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Context and evidence limits
- Election scrutiny: Separately, Polymarket was investigating suspicious, well-timed and profitable trades surrounding Israel’s election, including bets from hundreds of newly created accounts shortly before polls closed.
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3 The available evidence does not establish a connection between those trades and the hack.
- Unverified background: Insufficient evidence was retrieved to confirm June’s approximately $3 million vendor-related theft from fewer than 15 accounts and subsequent refunds, the characterization of October’s attack as the year’s third security incident, September’s $21 billion valuation, the expected November 3 midterm trading surge, or investigations specifically involving midterm bets. Those details should not be treated as verified from this source set.