The crypto markets have been volatile these past few months; to be fair so has the stock market, so losing $100 million worth of digital coins is a bad thing. Crypto company Harmony had those coins stolen from them, and reports say this was in a string of cyber heists performed by hackers.
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Crypto company Harmony is a blockchain developer for peer-to-peer sites that offer crypto services. The company’s software makes it possible to operate without traditional banks and other financial institutions.
The California-based company said the heist hit its Horizon “bridge”, a tool for transferring crypto between different blockchains – the underlying software used by digital tokens such as bitcoin and ether.
Thefts have long plagued companies in the crypto sector, with blockchain bridges increasingly targeted. Over $1 billion has been stolen from bridges so far in 2022, according to London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
Harmony tweeted that it was “working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds”, without giving further details.
In a statement, Harmony added that it had a global team “working around the clock to address the issue”.
“We are currently narrowing down the potential attack vectors while working to identify the culprit,” a spokesperson said, adding that Harmony had already tried to contact the hacker via a transaction to their crypto wallet address.
Elliptic, which tracks publicly visible blockchain data, said the hackers stole a number of different cryptocurrencies from Harmony, including ether, Tether, and USD Coin, which they later swapped for ether using so-called decentralised exchanges.
Reuters
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