The Harmony blockchain’s Horizon bridge was recently compromised. During this incident, the hacker was able to take roughly $100 million in bitcoins. Harmony is offering a $1 million reward for the return of the missing money.
Harmony grants a reward
In order to retrieve the money taken during the hack of its Horizon bridge, which is connected to Ethereum, Harmony has chosen to pay a $1 million prize (ETH). The Harmony team shared this information about the hacking technique on Twitter in their statement. If the money was returned, she stated that she would be willing to negotiate “for no criminal charges to be brought.” It must be acknowledged that when the hack was revealed, the price of Harmony’s ONE token dropped by more than 10%.
The founder and CEO of Harmony, Stephen Tse, stated separately on Twitter that there is “no evidence of smart contract code violations.” “No indication of any Horizon platform vulnerability has been discovered. The Harmony blockchain’s consensus method is still safe, he continued.
The team discovered indications that the secret keys were compromised, which resulted in our Horizon bridge being breached, Tse stated two days prior. Harmony will keep putting steps in place to further reinforce the security of its operations and infrastructure while the inquiry is still ongoing, he added.
Security professionals revealed details about the hacking process in the interim. Head of IT security at Polygon Mudit Gupta said that the hacker likely compromised two private addresses to gain access to a multi-signature wallet that was used to deploy the Harmony Bridge before draining the funds.
Not just the Horizon Bridge has been compromised this year.
The Horizon Bridge makes it easier to move digital assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH), between several blockchains (BTC). The hacker that was able to take a range of digital assets from NFTs and the metaverse in one single attack was likely interested in this.
It should be kept in mind that, prior to the Horizon Bridge attack, a number of cross-chain bridges had been compromised since the year’s commencement. The Qubit Finance bridge was breached in January, and cryptocurrency valued at $80 million was taken.
The Wormhole Bridge was hacked by hackers the next month, and $320 million worth of cryptocurrency was taken. The Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge hack, which cost $620 million to fix, happened in March.
