Binance and Huobi collaborated to recover $2.5 million from Harmony One hackers.
Binance and Huobi try to save Bitcoin
In a recent tweet, on-chain crypto detective ZachXBT said hackers moved $64 million last weekend. Security teams at crypto exchanges Binance and Huobi worked together to freeze and recover 121 Bitcoins from the hackers behind the Harmony bridge exploit.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced in a tweet that hackers are trying to launder money through the Huobi exchange. After this was detected by Binance, they contacted and assisted Huobi to freeze and recover the digital assets deposited by the hackers.
We detected Harmony One hacker fund movement. They previously tried to launder through Binance and we froze his accounts. This time he used Huobi. We assisted Huobi team to freeze his accounts. Together, 124 BTC have been recovered. CeFi helping to keep DeFi #SAFU! 🙏
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) January 16, 2023
According to Zhao, exchanges have reclaimed a total of 121 BTC, which is estimated to be worth around $2.5 million at the time of this writing.
Assets consolidated
In a recent post, on-chain crypto detective ZachXBT highlighted that the hackers behind the exploit moved 41,000 Ethereum (ETH) worth about $64 million last weekend, before Binance and Huobi froze and identified the funds.
1/2 North Korea’s Lazarus Group had a very busy weekend moving $63.5m (~41000 ETH) from the Harmony bridge hack through Railgun before consolidating funds and depositing on three different exchanges. pic.twitter.com/huDumaJeSh
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 15, 2023
According to the crypto detective, after the hackers moved the funds, they consolidated the digital assets and deposited them in three different crypto exchanges. However, the on-chain detective did not specify the names of the exchanges used by the exploiters.
Harmony team detected
On June 24, the Harmony team identified the exploit and reported that $100 million in funds had been compromised. Hack highlighted concerns previously expressed by community members about some mutisigers securing the Horizon bridge.
On June 30, Lazarus Group, a notorious North Korean hacking organization, was identified as the suspect behind the $100 million Harmony attack. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic stated that the way the attack was carried out is similar to other Lazarus Group attacks.
Horizon bridge hack is one of the biggest exploits and hacks in 2022. Analysts believe Lazarus Group targeted employee login credentials to breach Harmony’s security system. The hackers then used laundering programs to move the stolen assets.
Harmony’s Horizon Bridge scammed $100M
The Horizon Bridge to the Harmony Layer-1 blockchain was exploited for $100 million in altcoins exchanged for Ether. The hack may justify previously raised community concerns about the robustness of two of the four multisigs reportedly protecting the bridge.
11 transactions were made through the bridge for various tokens. Since then, they have started sending tokens to a different wallet to exchange for ETH on the Uniswap decentralized exchange (DEX) and then sending ETH back to the original wallet.
cryptocoin.com As we mentioned, the Horizon bridge facilitates token transfers between Harmony and the Ethereum network, Binance Chain and Bitcoin. He said the BTC bridge and assets were not affected by the attack. The Harmony team also said it was working with “national authorities and forensic experts” to determine who was responsible.
