Blockchain's Developers on the Hunt for Hackers

In a Thursday update, Harmony developers said they had started a "global manhunt" to catch the perpetrators of last week's $100 million breach of its Horizon bridge,

The Horizon bridge was created to allow users to swap assets like stablecoins, tokens and NFTs between the Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Harmony blockchains.

The bounty for information leading to the arrest of the hacker, which was increased from $1 million to $10 million, is now at 0xd6ddd996b2d5b7db22306654fd548ba2a58693ac.

The Harmony team has also offered "one last chance" for the attackers to return the assets with anonymity: “The final condition is that they keep $10 million and return the rest, in addition to the team stopping their investigation.”

In a publication on Wednesday, cybersecurity firm Elliptic linked the attack to North Korean hacker group Lazarus.

"The researchers from Elliptic believe that the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacker group, was behind this theft," the release said. "They have identified several factors that support their conclusion."

Elliptic said that the movement of stolen funds mostly occurred during the Asia-Pacific nighttime hours and that the attack used techniques that were “often” used by the Lazarus Group.

Elliptic has estimated that Lazarus, which is responsible for a number of crypto thefts, stole over $2 billion in cryptocurrency. The firm added that the hacker known as the Horizon Bridge thief has transferred 41% of the $100 million in stolen crypto assets into Tornado Cash mixer so far.

The attackers transferred over 36,000 ether, worth $44 million at the time, to Tornado Cash in several transactions, as reported earlier this week.

The attacker's main wallet, which is identified as "Horizon Bridge Exploiter" on blockchain tracing service Etherscan, continues to hold over 33,000 stolen ethers, blockchain data shows.