Hacking in the crypto industry has been an important part of the space. One of the most recent missions, the exploration of Harmony Bridge, has been under investigation since it occurred. The latest update indicates that major cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Huobi have teamed up to recover some of the stolen funds.
The information was released by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in a tweet posted on January 16. cz chirp :
“We detected background traffic of the Harmony One hacker. Previously, they tried to launder money through Binance and we froze their accounts. This time using Huobi. We helped the Huobi team freeze their accounts. Together, 124 BTC recovered. CeFi helps keep DeFi SAFU” .
Binance and Huobi team up to recover stolen funds
Along with collaborating with the security teams of cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Huobi managed to freeze and recover a large amount of BTC from the funds stolen from the Harmony Bridge exploit.
According to CZ, the hackers attempted to launder the exploited funds through the Huobi exchange. After Binance discovered this, they reached out and helped Huobi freeze and recover the digital assets deposited by the hackers.
Zhao added that they have managed to recover approximately 124 BTC, which is worth more than $2 million, at the time of writing. Prior to the release of CZ, Crypto Sleuth, ZachXBT, looking at The hacker behind the Harmony Bridge exploit was moving funds worth 41,000 Ethereum (ETH), worth around $64 million, last weekend.
The hacker also consolidated the funds after they were transferred and then deposited on three separate cryptocurrency exchanges that ZachXBT did not disclose.
Harmony Bridge exploit summary
In June 2022, Harmony reveal That its Harmony Layer 1 blockchain Horizon Bridge has been hacked. According to the team’s explanation via Twitter, the theft resulted in a total of $100 million in Ethereum from the network.
After the exploit, Harmony notified several exchanges to shut down the Horizon Bridge so that users could not transact on the bridge and the attacker could not continue the exploit.
The protocol assured the public that the team was working with authorities to identify those responsible for the theft, which included working with the FBI and various cybersecurity firms.
Overall, there are reports that a notorious North Korean hacking organization called ‘Lazarus Group’ is suspected of being behind the Harmony Bridge hack, with Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic once noting that the manner in which the hack was carried out was similar to other attacks by the Lazarus Group.
Meanwhile, the global cryptocurrency market is currently at an all-time high, with the market capitalization crossing $1 trillion after months of hovering below the aforementioned figure. Harmony’s ONE token (COIN: ONEUST) also followed suit, rising 2.90% over the past 24 hours, with a trading volume of $51.8 million.
With information from Bitcoinist