Cryptocurrency tracking platform MistTrack has tracked the funds stolen in the Harmony Bridge hack and has released 350 addresses associated with the attack. The North Korean state group Lazarus is believed to be behind the attack. According to a Twitter thread posted on Jan. 23, the funds were transferred via various exchanges to circumvent trackers.
On June 23, 2022, funds in various tokens worth about $100 million were stolen from the Harmony Bridge, quickly exchanged for Bitcoin (BTC), according to MistTrack, and returned to the wallet they were originally transferred to. The bridge makes it easy to transfer between Harmony and the Ethereum, Binance Chain and Bitcoin network. Harmony offered a million dollars for the return of the funds, but the offer was not accepted.
Instead, the hackers, who were later identified as the North Korean group Lazarus, passed 85,700 Ether (ETH) through the Tornado Cash mixer and deposited it at various addresses, where they remained until January 13, when were transferred to a Railgun, a privacy system on Ethereum that provides anonymity. From there, they were transferred to the identified addresses.
New Updates on the Harmony Bridge Hack
On June 23rd of 2022, the Harmony bridge fell victim to a devastating attack that resulted in a loss of approximately $100 million.
https://t.co/Rlcl8Jj0s2— MistTrack️ (@MistTrack_io) January 23, 2023
Other funds were transferred to the blockchain Avalanche (AVAX), where they were exchanged for Tether (USDT) or Tron’s USDD token and, finally, they were deposited in addresses of the Ethereum and Tron networks.
Some progress has been made in recovering the stolen funds. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) announced via Twitter on Jan. 15 that 121 BTC had been recovered from the Huobi exchange after the Binance team detected its presence there.
Harmony proposed minting new ONE native tokens to refund some of the 65,000 wallets that had suffered losses from the hack, but that idea proved unpopular and instead advertisement in September a plan to reimburse the losses from its treasury. In November, Harmony said that he was going to add seven coins from the compromised bridge that had not been affected by the hack to his new LayerZero bridge, thus making it possible for coin holders to take them off the network.
Additional reporting by Tom Blackstone.
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