Like most cross-chain bridges, Harmony’s Horizon bridge allows crypto holders to move assets between Harmony’s network and the Ethereum network, Binance Chain and Bitcoin. In June 2022, the bridge was exploited for approximately $100 million in altcoins (which the attacker swapped for Ethereum) after two of its five validator nodes were compromised.
Although the Harmony team offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the return of the stolen funds, security experts discovered that the attacker(s) had begun moving the loot through the now-defunct Ethereum mixing service, Tornado Cash. There were also reports that the hack was linked to Lazarus Group, a notorious North Korea-affiliated cybercriminal organization.
Interesting:
Interestingly, it appears all hope has not been lost. In January 2023, Binance and Huobi crypto exchanges teamed up to recover some of the stolen funds.
On January 16, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in a tweet: “We detected Harmony One hacker fund movement. They previously tried to launder through Binance, and we froze his accounts. This time he used Huobi. We assisted Huobi’s team in freezing his accounts. Together, 124 BTC have been recovered. CeFi helping to keep DeFi SAFU.”
