Harmony Protocol has suffered a massive exploit that saw an attacker mint 4 billion of Harmony’s ONE tokens, which is 26% of the token’s supply.
The incident was flagged on Wednesday morning by a security researcher on X, who said about 97% of the minted tokens had already been moved to exchanges.
Harmony confirmed the attack, saying it is working with appropriate exchanges to stop and freeze the funds.
The team has already suspended the Harmony Bridge and told validators to upgrade to a patch that prevents any further minting.
Harmony said it will follow up with another update to address the unauthorizedly minted token. Part of the measures the team is considering includes a rollback option.
The price of ONE token fell over 38% following the news.
“No one should assist them for free,” says ZachXBT
On-chain sleuth ZachXBT has said he will not be tracking the incident after Harmony called on all exchanges to block and freeze funds traced to four of the attacker’s wallet addresses.
“Harmony took advantage of people who assisted during the $100M Harmony Bridge exploit by DPRK in 2022 and rewarded $0 for significant freezes which lead to LE seizures and simply said ‘good job’,” ZachXBT said.
Harmony Horizon Bridge was hacked in June 2022, with nearly $100 million in crypto stolen. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed North Korea’s Lazarus Group was responsible for the exploit.
