Hackers have struck layer 1 blockchain Harmony's Horizon bridge, stealing $100 million in cryptocurrency.
The exploit was revealed in a tweet in the early hours of Friday morning. The Harmony team revealed that it had "identified a theft occurring this morning on the Horizon bridge amounting to approx. $100MM." It went on to add that the address of the culprit had been identified and that the Harmony team are working with "national authorities and forensic specialists" to retrieve the stolen funds.
In a follow-up tweet, Harmony noted that it is "working around the clock" alongside the FBI and "multiple cyber security firms."
1/ The Harmony team has identified a theft occurring this morning on the Horizon bridge amounting to approx. $100MM. We have begun working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds.
Tokens including Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), AAVE, SUSHI, DAI, Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) have been stolen from the bridge and swapped for Ethereum.
Harmony stated that it has stopped the Horizon bridge to prevent further transactions, and noted that the exploit does not affect its trustless BTC bridge. "Its funds and assets stored on decentralized vaults are safe at this time," said the Harmony team.
Harmony's ONE token has plunged by over 10% on the day, per data from CoinMarketCap, and is currently changing hands for $0.02416.
Harmony aims to solve the "blockchain trilemma" of balancing scalability with security and decentralization. The cross-chain Horizon feature enables crypto holders to move between Harmony's network and the Ethereum network, Binance Chain and Bitcoin.
More Videos
0 seconds of 6 minutes, 55 secondsVolume 90%
Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
This is the latest in a series of exploits that have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from cross-chain bridges in recent months. In January, Qubit Finance's bridge was hacked for $80 million, and just a month later, the Wormhole bridge was hacked for $320 million.
Both hacks were dwarfed, however, by the March 2022 hack of Axie Infinity's Ronin bridge, which drained $622 million in Ethereum and USDC.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.
This week:
Worrying details from Coinbase
The data breach Coinbase told users and investors about last week has gotten a little more worrying.
It’s not that more data has been stolen. But the company filed a disclosure with the Maine Attorney General that included a few key details that were missing from its SEC filing and blog post about the exploit.
The breach occurred on December 26, 2024, and w...
The Russian Ministry of Energy is considering offering its now strictly regulated Bitcoin mining industry incentives to move to the north of the country.
The move follows Russia slapping a Bitcoin mining ban on ten regions (mainly in the south) in January of this year: Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
Russia to Ban Crypto Mining 'In Some Regions' Due to Electricity Shortages
The ban is set to rema...
Kraken will soon offer overseas customers the ability to trade U.S.-listed stocks through the crypto exchange’s platform, the company said in a press release on Thursday.
The offering, which covers more than 50 U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds, will be facilitated through a partnership with Backed, a firm specializing in tokenized securities, using the Solana blockchain to offer so-called xStocks, the company said.
Tokenization refers to the process of taking real-world assets, wheth...
