Binance, Huobi Collaborate To Freeze, Recover $2.5M In Stolen Bitcoin From Harmony Bridge Exploit

Security teams at crypto exchanges Binance and Huobi worked together to freeze and recover 124 Bitcoin BTC/USD from hackers behind the Harmony bridge exploit, according to Binance's CEO. 

In a tweet, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced the hackers had tried to launder the funds through the Huobi exchange.

After this was detected by Binance, the exchange contacted and assisted Huobi to freeze and recover the digital assets that had been deposited by the hackers, he said.

According to Zhao, the exchanges recovered a total of 124 BTC, which is estimated to be worth around $2.5 million at the time of writing.

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

In a recent post, on-chain crypto detective ZachXBT also highlighted that prior to Binance and Huobi freezing and detecting the funds, the hackers behind the exploit were moving around 41,000 Ethereum ETH/USD worth around $64 million in the last weekend.

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This shows that the hackers were trying to move the funds as quickly as possible to avoid detection.

The crypto detective said the cybercriminals subsequently transferred and placed the digital assets on three different cryptocurrency trading platforms following the transfer of funds.

The on-chain detective did not specify the names of the exchanges used by the exploiters.

This is not the first time that crypto exchanges have had to deal with such incidents. In the past, many exchanges have fallen victim to hacking attempts, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars worth of digital assets.

Harmony had offered a $1-million bounty for information about a theft on the Horizon bridge amounting to around $100 million, in which tokens including Wrapped Ethereum SOETH/USD, Aave AAVE/USD, SushiSwap SUSHI/USD, DAI DAI/USD, Tether USDT/USD, and USD Coin USDC/USD were stolen.

Next: Cryptocurrency Scandal: $20.1B In Illicit Transactions Exposed

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