UwU Lend announces $5m bounty as hacker starts laundering stolen funds via Tornado Cash

As a seasoned crypto investor with a keen interest in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, I’ve seen my fair share of ups and downs. The recent turn of events involving UwU Lend, however, has left me feeling a mix of frustration, intrigue, and caution.


As a researcher investigating the decentralized lending protocol UwU Lend, I’m sharing that they have announced a reward of $5 million for anyone who can successfully identify and track down the individual or group responsible for exploiting their system.

Experts at UwU Lend have pledged a reward of up to $5 million to the individual who successfully identifies and locates the hacker responsible for breaching their protocol, resulting in over $23 million in cryptocurrency being stolen. This announcement followed the hacker’s failure to meet the team’s deadline, which stipulated the return of 80% of the stolen funds in exchange for a 20% reward.

According to the findings of cryptocurrency investigator @CryptoEvgen in their X account, the thief transferred the pilfered digital assets through Tornado Cash – a mixing service that has reportedly facilitated around $7 billion in cryptocurrency laundering since 2019, as per the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions.

UwU Lend hacker deposited 500 #ETH to Tornado.#hack #exploit #ethereum — Evgenii| BLIN Analytics (@CryptoEvgen) June 14, 2024

At present, reports indicate that the hacker has successfully washed at least 500 Ether (worth around $1.7 million based on current market values) by the time this article was published.

A hacker struck UwU Lend twice in under three days, exploiting the open-source AAVE v2 platform for flash loans and compromising various liquidity pools.

Michael Patryn, who is also recognized as Omar Dhanani or “0xSifu,” established UwU Lend. This company offers lending, borrowing, and staking features, with the platform’s earnings being distributed among users through its unique token named UwU.

Read More

2024-06-14 12:25