Huobi and Binance had recently reported that they seized USD 1.4 million worth of crypto funds which they state are connected to the exploitation of the Harmony bridge, in June 2022.
Cryptocurrency scams and hacks are increasing and, to prevent them from happening, crypto trading platforms must step up their game.
In a report released on Valentine’s Day, the two crypto trading platforms revealed that they confiscated and blocked the funds from moving between accounts thought to be tied to infamous North Korea-based hackers. The recovery of the funds was made possible with the help of investigations coordinated by Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company.
North Korea-based criminal group Lazarous hacked into Horizon Bridge on the 22nd of June 2022. Close to USD 100 million worth of digital assets were reportedly stolen from Harmony’s bridge. Several sources state that the hack happened at 7 am and lasted approximately 18 minutes. During this time, the hackers, through 11 transactions, stole various tokens worth millions of dollars.
The hackers, after the attack, expediated the stolen funds to a different wallet on a DEX from Uniswap, to exchange them for ETH. Since Harmony leverages Horizon Bridge to exchange tokens via networks such as Bitcoin, Binance Chain, and Ethereum, the attack was considered to be a serious one. Thus, the FBI launched an investigation to discover who the hackers were and seize the stolen. The Bureau managed to discover that Lazarus was behind the attack.
The funds were discovered recently after the hackers began to funnel them via complicated transaction blockchains. Elliptic, being one of the investigation companies involved, got clues to recover the funds and informed both Binance and Huobi.
