Hackers Steal $100m Worth of Crypto in Another Major Heist

Hackers have stolen $100 million in cryptocurrency from Horizon, a blockchain bridge, in the latest major heist in the world of decentralized finance.

Etherum | Source: Jakub Porzycki | NurPhoto | Getty Images

CNBC reports that details of the attack are still sketchy, but Harmony, the developers behind Horizon, said they identified the theft Wednesday morning. 

Harmony singled out an individual account it believes to be the culprit.

Company launches investigations

According to a tweet from Harmony, the company said it had begun working with national authorities to discover the culprit and get back the stolen money.

 

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.

More 🧵

— Harmony 💙 (@harmonyprotocol) June 23, 2022

Blockchain bridges are very crucial in the DeFi ecosystem and offer users a way to transfer their assets from one blockchain to another. Users can send tokens from the Ethereum network to Binance Smart Chain, in the case of Harmony. 

Decentralised Finance weaknesses 

The company said the bitcoin bridge was not affected in the attack. DeFi aims to reconstruct conventional financial services like loans and investments on the blockchain as bridges become an important target for hackers due to weaknesses in their underlying code. 

They also maintain large stores of liquidity which makes them alluring targets for hackers, Jess Symington said. 

Harmony has not made known how the cryptos were carted away but an investor had in a tweet as early as April raised worries about the security of the platform.

Since the current narative du-jour is bridges & bridge hacks, I wanted to do some digging on the harmony bridge on Ethereum which secures ~$330m worth of tokens.

— Ape Dev (@_apedev) April 1, 2022

Harmony is yet to respond to comment from CNBC as at press time. 

The attack on Harmony follows a series of similar attacks on blockchain bridges, including the $600 million Ronin Network heist and the $320 million stolen from Wormhole.