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

LONDON, June 24 (Reuters) – U.S. crypto firm Harmony said on Friday that thieves stole around $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 develops blockchains for so-called decentralised finance – peer-to-peer sites that offer loans and other services without the traditional gatekeepers such as banks – and non-fungible tokens.

The California-based company said the heist hit its Horizon “bridge”, a tool for transferring crypto between different blockchains – the underlying software used by digital tokens such as bitcoin and ether.

Thefts have long plagued companies in the crypto sector, with blockchain bridges increasingly targeted. Over $1 billion has been stolen from bridges so far in 2022, according to London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. read more

[1/3]  Representations of virtual cryptocurrencies are placed on U.S. Dollar banknotes in this illustration taken November 28, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Harmony tweeted that it was “working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds”, without giving further details.

In a statement, Harmony added that it had a global team “working around the clock to address the issue”.

“We are currently narrowing down the potential attack vectors while working to identify the culprit,” a spokesperson said, adding that Harmony had already tried to contact the hacker via a transaction to their crypto wallet address.

Elliptic, which tracks publicly visible blockchain data, said the hackers stole a number of different cryptocurrencies from Harmony, including ether, Tether, and USD Coin, which they later swapped for ether using so-called decentralised exchanges.

In March, hackers stole around $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. read more

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

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Elizabeth Howcroft

Thomson Reuters

Reports on the intersection of finance and technology, including cryptocurrencies, NFTs, virtual worlds and the money driving “Web3”.

Tom Wilson

Thomson Reuters

Tom covers crypto companies, regulation and markets from London, focusing through 2022 on the Binance crypto exchange. He has worked at Reuters since 2014, with a previous posting to Tokyo where he uncovered abuses in Japan’s immigration system and won a joint Overseas Press Club award for reporting on the tobacco giant Philip Morris.

Hannah Lang

Thomson Reuters

Hannah Lang covers financial technology and cryptocurrency, including the businesses that drive the industry and policy developments that govern the sector. Hannah previously worked at American Banker where she covered bank regulation and the Federal Reserve. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park and lives in Washington, DC.