Indications that something was under foot were given yesterday later afternoon when Alex Van de Sande, lead designer at the Ethereum Foundation, twitted that a whitehat attack on the DAO was under way.

After some tense hours, Sande explained in a public post that "a group of very smart people" which, according to Stephan Tual, were composed of "members of eth foundation, devs, security experts, ethcore, slock," acting as individuals and not as representatives or with any endorsement of their employers, infiltrated "all open split proposals" and secured 7.2 million eth "now held in a child DAO" with the team holding "the private keys of the curator."

Fabian Vogelsteller, lead Ðapp developer at Ethereum, stated in a public post:

"We know the curator of the Attacker DAO with 3.5M ether, now 7.2 ether are safe in a DAO where we also know the curator. With a temporary Soft Fork all this ethers can be send to a refund contract and the nightmare is over!"