Harmony has offered a $10 million bounty to the hacker behind the latest Horizon Bridge hack and has begun a ‘global manhunt’ for the hacker. The hack reportedly took place on June 23rd where Hamony realized the breach on June 24th morning. The digital assets which included mix of various cryptocurrencies disappeared from its cross-chain bridge ‘Horizon’. The Layer-1 solution blockchain, Harmony immediately took the issue on twitter handle and announced about the exploit.
Horizon bridge is cross-chain interoperability bridge where users can send cryptocurrencies from Harmony blockchain to Ethereum, Binance chain, Bitcoin and visa versa.
The hacker has stolen $100 million worth of cryptocurrencies. This includes Ether (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Tether (USDT), and Binance Coin (BNB). Currently, Harmony has begun a ‘global manhunt’ to retrieve the perpetrator.
Also, Harmony team has contact law enforcement such as Chainalysis, and AnChain.AI to identify the attacker. However, initially Harmony offered $1 million to the attacker to return the funds. But the latest news says it has raised the offered amount by ten times. According to the latest post , it says ‘Retain $10 million and return the remaining stolen amount’.
As final ultimatum given to the attacker, Harmony has pledge to drop its investigation if the funds are returned substracting a $10 million bounty. Further, Harmony is offering a $10 million to anyone who can provide essential information to retrieve stolen funds from the perpetrator’s account.
Moreover, the Harmony team is suspecting the compromise of multi-sig wallet keys as the cause of the theft. On the other hand, it reassured users that its BTC bridge is safe and has increased the security measures. Also the blockchain firm is working closely with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit.
ONE token plunges to 35%
Within a span of a week, the native token of Harmony blockchain ONE fell 5% from its trending value. According to CoinMarketCap data, on June 24th, the native token ONE was trading at $0.026. Whereas today the value depreciated to $0.01701 over 35% at the press time.
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