The Horizon Bridge cross-chain bridge, on the Harmony blockchain, was hacked for $100 million this Thursday.
The Horizon Bridge hacker managed to extract $100 million of funds deposited on the Ethereum-Harmony cross-chain bridge, using different altcoins.
According to block explorer Etherscan, the hacker managed to extract funds from the cross-chain bridge in Wrapped Ethereum (wETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), SushiSwap (SUSHI), Aave (AAVE), Frax (FRAX) and Frax Share (FXS) tokens. , AAG (AAG) and in the stablecoins Dai (DAI), Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC) and Binance USD (BUSD).
Blockchain research and analysis firm PeckShield Inc. recently shared on its Twitter account an initial flowchart of how the hacker has been moving the stolen funds.
Tokens and altcoins mined from Horizon Bridge moved from the hacker's identified address to a different address from which several swaps were made via Uniswap, to exchange the stolen tokens for Ethereum (ETH). After this, the funds were sent back to the hacker's wallet.
Harmony developers confirm Horizon Bridge hack
The Harmony development team has confirmed the theft of the cross chain bridge.
On Twitter, the blockchain developers identified the hack that occurred this Thursday on the Horizon Bridge, pointing out that the sum of the stolen funds in the different altcoins is close to 100 million dollars.
As explained on the social network, they have already begun working with police authorities and several cybersecurity specialists to identify the hacker and recover the stolen funds.
Cryptocurrency exchanges and exchange platforms have also been notified about the Horizon Bridge hack, in order to prevent the hacker from being able to withdraw the stolen funds.
In the post, the Harmony developers indicated that the attack on Horizon only affected the Ethereum-Harmony bridge, so assets deposited on the Bitcoin bridge remain safe until now.
“Please note that this does not affect the trustless BTC bridge; Your funds and assets stored in decentralized vaults are safe at this time”, the developers wrote.
More than $1.000 billion hacked in cross chain bridges this year
This year, cross-chain bridges, which make it easy for users to make exchanges between assets on different blockchains, have been the main targets of hackers.
The Horizon Bridge theft adds to the list of hacks and vulnerabilities that have been exploited in this type of protocols this year and that already amount to more than $1.000 billion in losses. After the Ronin Bridge and Wormhole hacks, the Horizon Bridge theft is the third largest recorded cross-chain bridge theft in the crypto industry in 2022.
Ronin Bridge, based on the Ronin Network blockchain, was hacked in late March for more than $600 million. Wormhole, based on the Solana blockchain, lost 120.000 ETH, worth more than $320 million at the time of the hack. However, the funds stolen from Wormhole were restored by Jump Trading's cryptocurrency arm, Jump Crypto, within days of the hack occurring.
In the case of Horizon Bridge, the founder of Chainstride Capital, known as “Ape Dev”, had warned about some of the high-risk security flaws in the cross-chain bridge.
“If two of the four multisig signers are compromised, we are going to see another 9-figure hack”, wrote Ape Dev on his Twitter account in early April.
Continue reading: Hacker drains $90 million from Mirror Protocol without being caught
