How Harmony’s Horizon Bridge Was Hacked For $100M

Hackers gained access to the Harmony layer-1 blockchain using the Horizon Bridge, and they exchanged $100 million in cryptocurrencies for ether (ETH).

iexclusivenews reports that the hack might prove the community’s earlier worries about the reliability of the two of four multisig that purportedly safeguards the bridge to be unfounded.

This online news outlet understands that there were 11 transactions conducted from the bridge for different tokens between 7:08 and 7:26 ET.

Since then, they have started transferring tokens to an alternative wallet in order to exchange them for ETH on the Uniswap decentralized exchange (DEX), then transferring the ETH back to the original wallet.

So far, Frax (FRAX), Wrapped Ether (WETH). Aave (AAVE), Sushi (SUSHI), Frax Share (FXS), AAG (AAG), Binance USD (BUSD). Dai (DAI), Tether (USDT), Wrapped BTC (WBTC), and USD Coin (USDC) have been stolen from the bridge through this exploit.

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Token transfers between Harmony and the Ethereum network, Binance Chain, and Bitcoin are made possible by the Horizon Bridge.

The bridge has been stopped, according to Harmony, the bridge’s operator, who made the announcement late on June 23.

BTC bridge and its assets, according to the statement, were unaffected by the attack.

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The Harmony team added that it was collaborating with “national authorities and forensic experts” to identify the culprit. There will undoubtedly be a postmortem.

Requests for response from Harmony’s developers and co-founder Nick White went unanswered.

Layer-1 blockchain Harmony uses proof-of-stake consensus. One is its native token.

The reliability of Horizon’s multisig wallet on Ethereum, which only required two of the four signers to drain the cash, has previously been questioned.

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The low number of required signers would leave the bridge exposed for “another 9 figure hack,” said Chainstride Capital CEO Ape Dev on Twitter on April 2.

Given that the bridge’s assets are currently down by $100 million, Ape Dev’s prediction seems to have come true.

He is not the only cryptocurrency engineer who has concerns about the safety of token bridges.

In a Reddit post this past January, Vitalik Buterin outlined the problems with token bridges.

According to his theory, when bridges are misused, the liquidity of each chain that is impacted is put in jeopardy.

The prospect of a 51 percent attack on one chain could pose a bigger risk of spreading to other chains as the number of token bridges rises, he continued.

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Since he made his prediction, the Wormhole Bridge, Ronin Bridge, and Meter’s Token Bridge have all been used for approximately $1 billion in total.

Attacks continue to pose a security risk due to multisignature. Only five of the nine validators on the Ronin Bridge were necessary to confirm a transaction.

Over $600 million in assets were taken by the attacker when he gained control of the necessary five validators.

The prices of all the affected coins and tokens have not changed significantly, suggesting that the market has not yet reacted to the attack.

However, iexclusivenews Nigeria reports over the previous 24 hours, ONE has decreased 7.4%, with the most of the decline occurring in the last 5 hours. According to CoinGecko, it is currently trading at $0.024.