- U.S. authorities have seized $31M in crypto from the 2021 Uranium Finance hack.
- Hackers stole around $50 million in 2021.
The U.S. government confiscated about $31 million in cryptocurrency connected to the 2021 hack of Uranium Finance. This was a coordinated effort by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and the San Diego Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
Uranium Finance, a decentralized exchange on the model of Uniswap but deployed on Binance’s BNB Chain, was hit by a major security incident in April 2021. Taking advantage of a flaw in the platform’s smart contract, hackers made off with an estimated $50 million.
The stolen funds from the platform include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Binance USD, Binance Coin, and U92, Uranium’s native token. The exploit was done during the migration of Uranium to its v2 upgrade.
After the upgrade of the exchange, the hacker took advantage of a vulnerability in Uranium’s v2 contracts. Also, they’ve changed their swap fees from 0.20% to 0.16%.
Furthermore, the attacker exploited a flaw in Uranium’s smart contract by depositing the minimum required tokens into its pair contracts. A miscalculation in the contract’s balance field—caused by a misplaced zero—left a critical vulnerability. It allows the hacker to drain liquidity pools across multiple token pairs.
To fix the security flaw, the team opted to establish a second version of Uranium Finance, v2.1, to migrate the protocol.
After the hack, the hackers used complex mechanisms to clean the stolen funds. Methods used were channeling the money via crypto mixers such as Tornado Cash. Also, splitting the smaller quantities into multiple centralized exchanges.
In particular, the recent confiscation of $31 million marks a significant portion of the funds embezzled. Though the figure is less than the amount lost, it provides a level of redress to victims.
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