The hackers took out about $ 100 million in cryptocurrency from a so-called blockchain bridge operated by Harmony, adding to the more than a billion dollars have already been stolen in crypto until this year.
Harmony said it notified other exchanges and stopped its bridge, called Horizon, to prevent further transactions while the company investigates the theft. An individual account is believed to be behind the theft, the company said Thursday in a series of tweets.
1 / The Harmony team has identified a robbery that occurred this morning on the Horizon Bridge for an amount of approx. $ 100 million. We have started working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and recover the stolen funds.
More 🧵
– Harmony 💙 (@harmonyprotocol) June 23, 2022
4 / We also notified the exchanges and stopped the Horizon Bridge to prevent further transactions. The team is on hand as investigations continue.
We will keep everyone up to date as we research more and get more information.
– Harmony 💙 (@harmonyprotocol) June 23, 2022
The company is “working with national authorities and forensic experts to identify the culprit and recover the stolen funds,” Harmony said of the theft of its Horizon bridge that allows the exchange of coins. multiple blockchains. In a later tweet, Harmony said he is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and cybersecurity companies to investigate the attack.
Harmony did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trembling bridge
Harmony and other so-called blockchain bridges were developed to accept multiple tokens as additional cryptocurrencies are adopted and users seek to make transfers more easily. Horizon offers cross-chain exchanges between Ethereum and Binance’s Smart Chain.
However, bridges are considered especially susceptible to attacks and are often the target of cybercriminals, with $ 1.3 billion stolen from bridges during the first three months of the year, according to an estimate by researcher Chainalysis.
Attacks a Crypto.com in January, Wormhole in February and Ronin Network in March caused multimillion-dollar losses. Cybersecurity experts say hackers often target decentralized or DeFi funding platforms with weak security.
DeFi services are typically based on public blockchains, allowing users to exchange back and forth cryptography without the need for an established financial institution such as a bank or credit union.
In another attack, hackers in April stole $ 182 million from the DeFi Beanstalk Farms service. PeckShield, a blockchain security company in China, said the thieves used a “flash loan” to exploit security weaknesses in Beanstalk. A flash loan is an unsecured loan that avoids the need for collateral from the borrower by using smart contracts that require repayment at the end of a transaction, usually in a matter of seconds or minutes.
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