Nearly $100 million worth of crypto stolen in another major hack as hackers exploited Harmony’s Horizon blockchain bridge

Crypto tech startup Harmony announced Thursday that hackers have stolen $100 million worth of crypto from its Horizon blockchain bridge. The hack is the latest in a series of major heists in the world of decentralized finance (DeFI). The announcement comes just three months after hackers stole $615M in the largest crypto heist from blockchain startup Ronin.

While details of the attacks are still sketchy, Harmony, the crypto startup and developers behind Horizon, said they first identified the theft Wednesday morning. The company said it has singled out an individual account it believes was responsible for the hack.

In a tweet late Wednesday, Harmony said: “We have begun working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds.”

Then in a follow-up tweet on Thursday, the startup said its “team has identified a theft occurring this morning on the Horizon bridge amounting to approx. $100MM and “have begun working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds.”

“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.”

https://twitter.com/harmonyprotocol/status/1540110924400324608

The Horizon Bridge is a cross-chain protocol that allows users to transfer tokens between the Ethereum, Binance, and Harmony blockchains.  The Horizon Bridge uses smart contracts to facilitate token transfers between the three blockchains. It also acts as a bridge to Bitcoin, allowing it as a wrapped ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.

In recent months, the bridges have become a prime target for hackers due to vulnerabilities in their underlying code. Back in February, we wrote about the crypto platform Wormhole, a bridge between Solana and other blockchains,  after hackers exploited the Wormhole network and stole 120,000 ETH (around $320 million).

Fortunately, Wormhole reported the following day that it was able to recover the stolen fund. But now, another crypto exchange has just fallen victim to what may be described as the largest crypto hack yet.

In the last decade alone, hackers and scammers have stolen over $12 billion in crypto assets, according to the data released by the Atlas VPN team.