• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

Orange reports major cyberattack, warns of service disruptions

 | 

Hackers leak images and comments from women dating safety app Tea

 | 

Pro-Ukraine hacktivists claim cyberattack on Russian Airline Aeroflot that caused the cancellation of +100 flights

 | 

Seychelles Commercial Bank Reported Cybersecurity Incident

 | 

Microsoft uncovers macOS flaw allowing bypass TCC protections and exposing sensitive data

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Cisco ISE and PaperCut NG/MF flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Critical WordPress Post SMTP plugin flaw exposes 200K+ sites to full takeover

 | 

Scattered Spider targets VMware ESXi in using social engineering

 | 

China-linked group Fire Ant exploits VMware and F5 flaws since early 2025

 | 

Allianz Life data breach exposed the data of most of its 1.4M customers

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 55

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 534 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

Law enforcement operations seized BlackSuit ransomware gang’s darknet sites

 | 

Arizona woman sentenced for aiding North Korea in U.S. IT job fraud scheme

 | 

Operation CargoTalon targets Russia’s aerospace with EAGLET malware,

 | 

Unpatched flaw in EoL LG LNV5110R cameras lets hackers gain Admin access

 | 

Koske, a new AI-Generated Linux malware appears in the threat landscape

 | 

Mitel patches critical MiVoice MX-ONE Auth bypass flaw

 | 

Coyote malware is first-ever malware abusing Windows UI Automation

 | 

SonicWall fixed critical flaw in SMA 100 devices exploited in Overstep malware attacks

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • APT
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Malware
  • FBI confirms that North Korea-linked Lazarus APT is behind Harmony Horizon Bridge $100 million cyber heist

FBI confirms that North Korea-linked Lazarus APT is behind Harmony Horizon Bridge $100 million cyber heist

Pierluigi Paganini January 24, 2023

The U.S. FBI attributes the $100 million cyber heist against Harmony Horizon Bridge to North Korea-linked Lazarus APT.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week confirmed that in June 2022 the North Korea-linked Lazarus APT group and APT38 stole $100 million worth of cryptocurrency assets from the Blockchain company Harmony Horizon Bridge.

“The FBI continues to combat malicious cyber activity, including the threat posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the U.S. and our private sector partners. Through our investigation, we were able to confirm that the Lazarus Group and APT38, cyber actors associated with the DPRK, are responsible for the theft of $100 million of virtual currency from Harmony’s Horizon bridge reported on June 24, 2022.” reads the report published by the FBI.

The company reported the incident to the authorities, the FBI started investigating the cyber heist with the help of several cybersecurity firms. 

Harmony’s Horizon Bridge allows users to transfer their crypto assets from one blockchain to another, the company immediately halted the bridge to prevent further transactions and notified other exchanges.

The blockchain security firm CertiK published a detailed analysis of the incident, it confirmed that the threat actors were able to access the owners of Horizon’s multiSig wallets, then drained the funds from Harmony.

“On June 23, 2022 at 11:06:46 AM +UTC, the bridge between Harmony chain and Ethereum experienced multiple exploits. Our expert analysis has identified twelve attack transactions and three attack addresses.” reads the analysis published by CertiK. “Across these transactions the attacker netted various tokens on the bridge including ETH, USDC, WBTC, USDT, DAI, BUSD, AAG, FXS, SUSHI, AAVE, WETH, and FRAX. The transactions vary in value but range from $49,178 to upwards of $41,200,000. The attacker accomplished this by somehow controlling the owner of the MultiSigWallet to call the confirmTransaction() directly to transfer large amounts of tokens from the bridge on Harmony, which led to a total loss around $97M worth of asset on the Harmony chain which the attacker has consolidated into one main address.”

On June 27, the threat actors behind the cyber heist culprit have begun transferring the funds (roughly $39 million) through the Tornado Cash mixer service to launder the illicit profits.

Harmony-hack.png

The blockchain security firm Elliptic was able to analyze the transactions even after the use of the mixer service, it first reported that the North Korea-linked Lazarus APT was behind the attack.

“There are strong indications that North Korea’s Lazarus Group may be responsible for this theft, based on the nature of the hack and the subsequent laundering of the stolen funds. Lazarus is believed to have stolen over $2 billion in cryptoassets from exchanges and DeFi services.” reads the report published by Elliptic. “The theft was perpetrated by compromising the cryptographic keys of a multi-signature wallet – likely through a social engineering attack on Harmony team members. Such techniques have frequently been used by the Lazarus Group.”

According to the firm the threat actors compromed the cryptographic keys of a multi-signature wallet, likely through a social engineering attack aimed at Harmony team members.

Elliptic researchers pointed out that the relatively short periods during which the stolen funds stop being moved out of Tornado cash are consistent with nighttime hours in Asia-Pacific time zone.

The FBI experts reported that on January 13, 2023, North Korean threat actors used the RAILGUN privacy protocol to launder over $60 million worth of ethereum (ETH) stolen during the June 2022 cyber heist. Then the threat actors sent a portion of the stolen funds to several virtual asset service providers and converted them to bitcoin (BTC).  

The good news is that part of these funds were frozen, in coordination with the virtual asset service providers. The remaining bitcoin subsequently moved to a number of addresses shared by the FBI in its report.

The FBI also revealed that the attack leveraged the malware TraderTraitor campaign in the Harmony intrusion.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

[adrotate banner=”9″][adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Harmony)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]


facebook linkedin twitter

Bitcoin Hacking hacking news Harmony Horizon Bridge information security news IT Information Security Lazarus APT North Korea Pierluigi Paganini Security Affairs Security News

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini July 29, 2025
Orange reports major cyberattack, warns of service disruptions
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini July 29, 2025
Hackers leak images and comments from women dating safety app Tea
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    Orange reports major cyberattack, warns of service disruptions

    Security / July 29, 2025

    Hackers leak images and comments from women dating safety app Tea

    Data Breach / July 29, 2025

    Pro-Ukraine hacktivists claim cyberattack on Russian Airline Aeroflot that caused the cancellation of +100 flights

    Hacktivism / July 29, 2025

    Seychelles Commercial Bank Reported Cybersecurity Incident

    Data Breach / July 29, 2025

    Microsoft uncovers macOS flaw allowing bypass TCC protections and exposing sensitive data

    Hacking / July 29, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT