US crypto firm Harmony hit by US$100 million heist
LONDON: US crypto firm Harmony said on Friday (Jun 24) that thieves stole around US$100 million worth of digital coins from one of its key products, the latest in a string of cyber heists on a sector long targeted by hackers.Harmony develops blockchains for so-called decentralised finance - peer-to-peer sites that offer loans and other services without the traditional gatekeepers such as banks - and non-fungible tokens.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.
More than US$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.In March, hackers stole around US$615 million worth of cryptocurrency from Ronin Bridge, used to transfer crypto in and out of the
