Another crypto hack, and yet surprise surprise Crypto publications are not coving the story very well. And so it begins!
U.S. crypto firm Harmony said on Friday that thieves stole around US$100 million worth of digital coins from one of its key products, the latest in a string of cyber heists on a sector long targeted by hackers.
Harmony is a well-funded Blockchain company with many Silicon Valley engineers who previously worked for BigTech. At one point they were interested in me being part of their marketing team.
Hackers have stolen $100 million in cryptocurrency from Horizon, a so-called blockchain bridge, in the latest major heist in the world of decentralized finance.
Details of the attack are still slim, but Harmony, the developers behind Horizon, said they identified the theft Wednesday morning. Harmony singled out an individual account it believes to be the culprit.
The Harmony One token is down with the news:
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/harmony/
The California-based company said the heist hit its Horizon "bridge," a tool for transferring crypto between different blockchains.
Interestingly, Harmony Protocol is offering a $1 million bounty for the return of Horizon bridge funds and information on the exploit.
Harmony claims its mainnet runs Ethereum applications with 2-second transaction finality and 100 times lower fees.
“We have begun working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds,” the start-up said in a tweet late Wednesday.
As markets prepare for another crypto winter, to be hacked is not a good signal.
The PR of the company has not been great, and the suppression of this news on Crypto outlets is worrisome to me. It is conceivable we may be witnessing the beginning of the end for yet another high-flying crypto project.
Harmony was not so well established that $100 million is an insignificant amount of funds. In a follow-up tweet, Harmony said it’s working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and multiple cybersecurity firms to investigate the attack. That’s nice to hear, at least the FBI might be able to do something.
DeFi and Blockchain Bridges Vulnerable
The reality between crypto winters and Bitcoin bull runs, is that thefts have long plagued companies in the crypto sector, with blockchain bridges increasingly targeted. Over US$1 billion has been stolen from bridges so far in 2022, according to London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
Between ICO or NFT scams, there’s a lot of fraud and weak products taking place and companies that will never be profitable, or survive even just a few years. We focus so much on the hype that the failures and shitcoins aren’t being accounted for.
Bitcoin has not democratized finance, it’s likely allowed the ultra elite to become far more wealthy and powerful than they would have otherwise. The Pentagon and DARPA have a new push back as well: Blockchain not as decentralized as many assume, finds Pentagon sponsored research. At this point, nothing would surprise me. A lot of Tycoons, Wall Street hedge funds and VCs have a huge vested interest in various crypto schemes and Web3 business models like NFT platforms.
After working in the sector in marketing for blockchain startups, I became disgusted with all the shady stuff and fraud I was witnessing.
Blockchain bridges play a big role in the DeFi space, offering users a way of transferring their assets from one blockchain to another.
In March, hackers stole around US$615 million worth of cryptocurrency from Ronin Bridge, used to transfer crypto in and out of the game Axie Infinity. The United States linked North Korean hackers to the theft, one of the ever.
Bridges “maintain large stores of liquidity,” making them a “tempting target for hackers” say analysts and crypto cyber experts.
When DeFi bridges are vulnerable to hacks, how can we trust them and their credibility?
The lack of transparency is also frightening. Harmony has not revealed exactly how the funds were stolen. However, one investor had raised concerns about the security of its Horizon bridge as far back as April.
You’d imagine Web3 firms would have better security? Aren’t Harmony’s engineers supposed to be top notch?
The security of the Horizon bridge hinged on a “multisig” wallet that required only two signatures to initiate transactions.
Some researchers speculate the breach was the result of a “private key compromise,” where hackers obtained the password, or passwords, required to gain access to a crypto wallet.
Crypto Winter Weather
The heist adds to a stream of negative news in crypto lately. Crypto lenders Celsius and Babel Finance put a freeze on withdrawals after a sharp drop in the value of their assets resulted in a liquidity crunch. Meanwhile, beleaguered crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital could be set to default on a $660 million loan from brokerage firm Voyager Digital.
This after Luna’s rather shocking meltdown. Some speculate Tether could be vulnerable if Bitcoin plunges too dramatically. I’m actually in that camp. Coinbase even fired some of its employees. A lot of layoffs is now occurring in the Web3 space, according to tools like:
https://layoffs.fyi/
Harmony could have a reckoning due to this event that could compromise the startup. They have raised $18 million in total funding but their token has done fairly well in the Bitcoin Bull market of 2020 and 2021.
Im getting page cant be found
https://rekt.news/harmony-rekt/