After a period of hibernation lasting 647 days, one of the wallets connected to the $50 million hack of Uranium Finance in April 2021 seems to have been reactivated, and monies are now being transferred to the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash.
PeckShield and CertiK, two companies that specialize in cybersecurity, drew attention to the unexpected change on March 7 via their separate Twitter alert accounts.
According to information obtained from Etherscan, the hacker transferred the 2,250 Ether, which are now valued $3.35 million, over the course of seven hours in transactions ranging from one ETH to one hundred ETH, with all of the cash being sent to Tornado Cash.
Despite that, this is just one of the wallets connected with the hacker. Another Ethereum wallet that is associated with the hacker reveals that it was used for the last time 159 days ago, when it transmitted 5 ETH to a privacy-focused Ethereum zk-rollup on Aztec.
This event in 2023 is yet another instance in which a hacker’s wallet has awakened after being in a dormant state for an extended period of time. After attacking the Wormhole bridge for $321 million in early 2022, the hacker behind the Wormhole shifted roughly $155 million worth of ETH in January, over a year after the first transaction.
After being dormant for the previous six years, a prominent hacker known as the “blockchain bandit” transferred over $90 million within the same month.
In February, the Wormhole hacker moved another $46 million worth of stolen funds, while popular blockchain sleuth Wallet tied to Uranium Finance Hacker Reawakens after 647 Days, Shifting $3.3M highlighted via Twitter on February 23 that “dormant funds left over” from the April 2018 $230 million Gate.io exchange hack by “North Korea began to move after over 4.5 years.” The Gate.io hack was carried out by North Korea.
