In a recent development, security teams at popular crypto exchanges Binance and Huobi have worked together to freeze and recover 121 Bitcoin (BTC) from hackers behind the Harmony bridge exploit.
The hack, which was one of the largest to date, saw the theft of $100 million in funds.
The Harmony team detected the exploit on June 24th and later, on June 30th, the Lazarus Group, an infamous North Korean hacking organization, was identified as a suspect behind the hack.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced in a tweet that the hackers had tried to launder their funds through the Huobi exchange.
After this was detected by Binance, the exchange contacted and assisted Huobi to freeze and recover the digital assets deposited by the hackers.
According to Zhao, the exchanges recovered a total of 121 BTC, which is estimated to be worth around $2.5 million at the time of writing.
Prior to Binance and Huobi freezing and detecting the funds, the hackers behind the exploit were moving around 41,000 Ether (ETH), worth around $64 million in the last weekend.
On-chain crypto detective ZachXBT also highlighted that after moving the funds, the hackers consolidated and deposited the digital assets on three different crypto exchanges. However, the on-chain detective did not specify the names of the exchanges used by the exploiters.
The Horizon bridge hack is one of the largest exploits and hacks of 2022. Analysts believe that the Lazarus Group targeted the employee login credentials to breach Harmony’s security system.
The hackers then deployed laundering programs to move the stolen assets. The incident has raised concerns around the security of multi-signature wallets and the need for stronger security measures to protect against such hacks in the future.
