Anonymous blockchain analyst Zachxbt has made an interesting discovery regarding the hacker who targeted the Defi Uranium Finance platform earlier this year. The hacker, responsible for a loss of $50 million, utilized the popular card game Magic: The Gathering to launder a portion of the stolen funds.
After successfully hacking Uranium Finance, which resulted in the loss of 80 bitcoins, 1,800 ETH, and other assets, the attacker transferred 2,438 ETH to Tornado Cash. Furthermore, the attacker converted various cryptocurrencies to ETH and bitcoin in an attempt to obfuscate the source of the funds.
The hacker’s laundering technique involved withdrawing approximately 11,200 ETH from Tornado Cash in increments of 100 coins. These funds were then exchanged for “wrapped” ETH (Weth) and transferred to a new address before being converted to USDC stabilcoins. A portion of the laundered funds was used to purchase Magic: The Gathering cards.
To make these purchases, the hacker enlisted the help of an American broker who acted as an intermediary with the sellers. Throughout the process, the hacker’s identity remained concealed from the sellers. It is estimated that the hacker overpaid by 5-10% for starting decks, alpha assemblies, and sealed boxes of cards, spending millions on these purchases.
In addition to buying cards, the hacker also transferred some of the funds to centralized exchanges such as Kraken, Bitpay, and Coinbase. According to Zachxbt, these steps were taken to complicate the tracing of the funds back to their source, which is believed to be the hacking of Uranium Finance.
The hack of Uranium Finance in April 2021 was a significant incident in the decentralized finance (Defi) space. The protocol code error led to a loss of approximately $50 million. Uranium Finance, a fork of the popular Uniswap V2 platform, operates on the Binance Smart Chain. The hacker exploited a calculation error during the migration to version V2, allowing them to withdraw various cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance USD, Tether, Cardano tokens, Polkadot, WRApped BNB, and Uranium U92.