HacksNews

Harmony’s Horizon Bridge Faces $100M Crypto Exploit

  • It’s the 3rd major bridge hack in 2022.
  • The attacker stole several alts before transferring them to an Ethereum wallet.
  • Harmony (ONE) token hovers 94% down from its ATH.

Harmony revealed about identifying a theft happening on its Horizon bridge. The exploit involved about $100 million in different cryptocurrency tokens sent to the attacker’s ETH address. While publishing this news, the address had 85,867 SATs, worth approximately $99.3 million.

Harmony tweeted some hours following the exploit, confirming working all ways as it extends its investigation with the FBI and several cyber safety firms. At that time, it said it didn’t affect the trustless Bitcoin bridge as assets and funds on decentralized vaults remained safe.

Another Bridge Attack

This recent hack followed the March Ronin bridge attack, which accounted for the highest loss in the crypto industry, surrendering over $600 million to the fraudsters. One month earlier, attackers accumulated over $300M after exploiting the Wormhole bridge.

Harmony is a proof-of-stake, highly scalable, layer1 blockchain. Binance collaborated with Harmony in May 2019 for an IEO (Initial Exchange Offering). Meanwhile, the Horizon bridge is a gateway between Harmony and different networks, including Bitcoin, Binance Chain, and Ethereum.

@_apedev, Chainstride Capital founder, raised concerns about Horizon in April. He uncovered that four individuals owned a multisig wallet that governed security. The expert noted that only two could execute arbitrary transactions at the time. Moreover, he stated that compromising two of the multisig signers would translate to another 9-figure exploit.

Mutlisigs remains a weak point for cryptocurrency protocols as not all signatories complete a transaction. Harmony Protocol experienced turmoil this time. DeFiYield’s Rekt data shows Harmony’s is the 24th largest hack in the industry.

ONE Price Plummet

ONE’s damage has not been that severe considering everything. The alternative token lost about 11% within the last 12 hours. While writing this blog, ONE changed hands at $0.024, losing nearly 40% within the past two weeks (CoinGecko data). For now, ONE trades 93.7% down from its October 2021 ATH at $0.379.

What are your thoughts about the above content? Will the crypto space ever be safe from fraudsters? You can leave a comment in the reply section below.

top

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *