Generative Data Intelligence

A US$100m heist hits US crypto firm Harmony

Date:

Harmony said yesterday that hackers took around US$100 million (RM440.2 million) worth of digital coins from one of its key products.

Harmony is known for developing blockchains for so-called decentralised finance, a peer-to-peer site that offers loans and other services without the traditional gatekeepers such as banks, and non-fungible tokens.

The California-based company said its Horizon “bridge”, a tool for transferring crypto between different blockchains and also the underlying software used by digital tokens such as bitcoin and ether has been hit in a heist.

Thefts have been increasingly targeting blockchain bridges, plaguing companies in the crypto sector. In 2022, over US$1 billion has been stolen from bridges according to London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. According to Tweeter, Harmony was “working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds”, without giving further details.

Harmony added in a statement, that it had a global team “working around the clock to address the issue”.

A spokesperson said that “We are currently narrowing down the potential attack vectors while working to identify the culprit”, further adding that Harmony had already tried to contact the hacker via a transaction to their crypto wallet address.

Elliptic, a company which tracks publicly visible blockchain data, said the hackers stole a number of different cryptocurrencies from Harmony, including ether, Tether, and USD Coin. They later then swapped those stolen cryptocurrencies for ether using so-called decentralised exchanges.

Recently in March, hackers stole around US$615 million worth of cryptocurrency from Ronin Bridge, which was used to transfer crypto into and out of the game Axie Infinity. North Korean hackers have been linked by the United States to the theft. 

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