Binance and Huobi freeze $2,58 million linked to Harmony One hack

This was announced by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on January 16

16.01.2023 - 15:20

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What’s new? Cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Huobi were able to freeze accounts with funds of 124 BTC (about $2,58 million at the exchange rate on January 16) associated with the hacking of the Horizon cross-chain protocol on the Harmony network in June 2022. This was announced by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on his Twitter account. The project lost a total of $100 million as a result of the attack.

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

Harmony is a Layer 1 (L1) network built in the Ethereum ecosystem. The developers claim that in their network, transactions are executed in 2 seconds and fees are several times lower than in the main blockchain. The Horizon cross-chain bridge provides a link between Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Bitcoin networks. As of January 16, ONE is trading at $0,01741, having gained 1,16% in 24 hours, according to Binance.

What else is known? According to Zhao, the exchange’s team was able to track the movement of funds by Harmony’s hackers. Previously, the criminals had expected to launder stolen assets using Binance, but the exchange froze the funds. Now they have tried to use the Huobi platform.

In June 2022, Elliptic analysts accused the North Korean hacker group Lazarus of hacking Horizon. They noted that the specifics of the exploit and the laundering of stolen funds through the crypto mixer are similar to other incidents Lazarus’ involvement in which has been confirmed.

The developers themselves are cooperating with the FBI to investigate the incident, and have previously also offered hackers $1 million for the return of the remaining funds and disclosure of details of the exploit.

In September, the Harmony team unveiled a plan to compensate affected customers using the project’s reserves.

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