Hackers stole $100 million worth of cryptocurrencies from the Harmony blockchain Thursday. Harmony said in a tweet that it identified the hack early Thursday morning. The theft is the latest blow to the digital asset sector amid market turbulence. Loading Something is loading.
Hackers stole $100 million worth of cryptocurrencies from the Harmony blockchain Thursday, the company said on Twitter.
The company said it was working with the FBI and “forensic specialists to identify the culprits and retrieve the stolen funds.” Harmony said it had notified the Horizon bridge to stop further transactions.
Harmony did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Harmony is the protocol behind the crypto bridge Horizon, which allows the exchange of a broad ecosystem of tokens from blockchain to blockchain.
Crypto bridges act as a sort-of intermediary that allows a variety of tokens to interact with one another, which is typicality difficult because networks like ethereum and bitcoin require their native tokens to process transactions on their ecosystems.
But such bridges are vulnerable to thefts given the lack of clarity behind the inner workings of their technology and the anonymity of the teams behind them. Hackers have also targeted bridges as they are a central market place for a wide collection of coins.
The Horizon hack is the third attack on a crypto bridge so far this year, bringing the total stolen to roughly $1 billion. Hackers previously targeted the Wormhole bridge for $300 million in February before stealing $620 million from the Ronin bridge in March.