New blow in the world of cryptocurrencies. While the market was already giving investors cold sweats due to the collapse of prices, hacking cases are adding anxiety to the stress. On Friday June 24, 2022, Harmony revealed that it had suffered a hack in which $100 million was stolen.
Harmony is a blockchain company working to make it easier to build and use decentralized applications. In particular, it offers bridges (bridge), i.e. protocols allowing interoperability between blockchains. The company is particularly focused on the Ethereum network, although it supports Binance and three other chains. It was on the Horizon Bridge, allowing exchanges between the Ethereum blockchain and the Binance Smart Chain, that the attackers perpetrated their misdeeds. The hackers would thus have recovered ether, tether and USD Coin, then exchanged for ether on decentralized exchange platforms.
“The Harmony team has identified a theft that occurred this morning on the Horizon Bridge in the amount of approximately $100 millioncommented the company on Twitter. We have started working with national authorities and specialists to identify the culprit and recover the stolen funds.”. Harmony later clarified that it had suspended its Horizon bridge, to prevent more transactions from taking place while the hack is resolved. An individual account appears to have been identified as the source of the theft.
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.
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— Harmony ? (@harmonyprotocol) June 23, 2022
If the amount seems spectacular, it is however not the biggest theft that has occurred in the universe of cryptocurrencies. We remember that last March, more than 615 million dollars had been stolen by North Korean hackers on the Ronin network. This “sidechain”, which also constitutes a “bridge”, is for example used by the game Axie Infinityone of the industry’s headlines. pay-to-earn.
And it’s not just hacks that are worrying. Recently, we learned in a report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that since January 1, 2021, more than 46,000 people have lost more than a billion dollars in crypto-scams. And that’s just in the United States.