Like the bears weren’t doing enough damage to the crypto-verse, perpetrators continue to meddle with the market. With hacks and attacks taking the front stage, a part of the Harmony network was exploited. The Horizon Bridge to the Harmony layer-1 chain underwent a massive attack causing the loss of $100 million.
Horizon acts as a bridge between Ethereum, Binance Chain, and Bitcoin. However, the BTC bridge remained unfazed and is reportedly “safe at this time.” The network took to Twitter and informed the community that it had started probing the attack with the help of national authorities.
Earlier today, nearly 11 transactions took place from the bridge. These transactions occurred between 7:08 AM to 7:26 AM ET, during which the tokens were sent to several wallets to amass ETH on Uniswap.
The stolen tokens from the Horizon bridge include, Wrapped Ether [WETH], Dai [DAI], Wrapped BTC [WBTC], Tether [USDT], USD Coin [USDC], Binance USD [BUSD], Aave [AAVE], Frax [FRAX], Frax Share [FXS] as well as Sushi [SUSHI].
Furthermore, Harmony revealed that it was working with the FBI and several cyber security firms to investigate the attack.
Who is behind Harmony’s $100 million attack?
The attack further pushed Harmony’s native crypto ONE into the bearish pond. While the crypto market managed to catch a breath of fresh air, ONE dropped by 11.72 percent. The attack on the Horizon bridge is said to have triggered this downtrend.
While the platform continued to probe the attack, a security company revealed the reason behind the attack. 8BTCnews took to Twitter and noted that a leak in a private address initiated the whole episode.
It seems like attacks on bridges like this are pretty common. In February, the Wormhole bridge was exploited for a whopping $300 million in cryptocurrencies. It is noteworthy that if the attack had taken place during the bullish days, the value of the stolen funds would have been much higher.