U.S. Seizes $31M in Crypto Linked to Uranium Finance Hack

The U.S. government has successfully seized $31 million in cryptocurrency linked to the April 2021 Uranium Finance hack, marking a significant recovery in the ongoing investigation. The Southern District of New York (SDNY) and Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego collaborated to track and seize the funds, which were stolen through an exploit that compromised the automated market maker protocol.

Uranium Finance, which operated on the BNB chain (formerly known as Binance Smart Chain), suffered a severe security breach while transitioning to a new version of its protocol. The breach was the result of a bug within Uranium Finance's smart contract, allowing an attacker to exchange a single token for nearly the entire content of the protocol's liquidity pool. The platform, a fork of SushiSwap, ceased operations following the hack due to the team's failure to properly adapt the SushiSwap code, leaving vulnerabilities that were exploited in the attack.

The perpetrator subsequently laundered the stolen funds through the crypto mixer Tornado Cash and, in a peculiar turn of events, utilized "Magic: The Gathering" trading cards as part of the laundering process. This was revealed by the pseudonymous blockchain investigator ZachXBT. The seizure of the $31 million in cryptocurrency represents a substantial recovery for authorities and highlights the importance of collaboration between victims and law enforcement in tracking and recovering assets lost to cybercrimes.