U.S. crypto firm Harmony hit by $100 million heist

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LONDON (Reuters) -U.S. crypto firm Harmony mentioned on Friday that thieves stole round $100 million value of digital cash from certainly one of its key merchandise, the newest in a string of cyber heists on a sector lengthy focused by hackers.

Harmony develops blockchains for so-called decentralised finance – peer-to-peer websites that supply loans and different providers with out the normal gatekeepers reminiscent of banks – and non-fungible tokens.

The California-based firm mentioned the heist hit its Horizon “bridge”, a instrument for transferring crypto between completely different blockchains – the underlying software program used by digital tokens reminiscent of bitcoin and ether.

Thefts have lengthy plagued firms within the crypto sector, with blockchain bridges more and more focused. Over $1 billion has been stolen from bridges up to now in 2022, in keeping with London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.

Harmony tweeted that it was “working with nationwide authorities and forensic specialists to determine the offender and retrieve the stolen funds”, with out giving additional particulars.

In an announcement, Harmony added that it had a world staff “working across the clock to deal with the problem”.

“We are at the moment narrowing down the potential assault vectors whereas working to determine the offender,” a spokesperson mentioned, including that Harmony had already tried to contact the hacker by way of a transaction to their crypto pockets tackle.

Elliptic, which tracks publicly seen blockchain knowledge, mentioned the hackers stole quite a lot of completely different cryptocurrencies from Harmony, together with ether, Tether, and USD Coin, which they later swapped for ether utilizing so-called decentralised exchanges.

In March, hackers stole round $615 million value of cryptocurrency from Ronin Bridge, used to switch crypto out and in of the sport Axie Infinity. The United States linked North Korean hackers to the theft.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft and Tom Wilson in London and Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Alison Williams and Nick Macfie)



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