Uranium Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $57.2M
High #115 All-Time Math Mistake Exploit / Other binance bsc

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain binance 2 chains affected
Recovered $31.0M 54.2% returned
All-Time Rank #115 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Pair contracts in Uranium v2 had a bug due to which anyone could interact with them and withdraw almost all tokens due to a calculation error.

Details of the Exploit

Before interacting with Uranium, the attacker sent the minimum amount of each token to pair contracts. After that, they used a low-level function swap() whose execution should drain both reserves.

Stolen funds:

- 34k WBNB ($18M)

- 17.9M BUSD ($17.9M)

- 1.8k ETH ($4.7M)

- 80 BTC ($4.3M)

- 26.5k DOT ($0.8M)

- 638k ADA ($0.8M)

- 5.7M USDT ($5.7M)

- 112k U92

With the help of PancakeSwap, DOT and ADA were swapped to ETH. After that, the attacker withdrew 2,438 ETH via Anyswap to Ethereum (deposited into Tornado Cash mixer at https://etherscan.io/txs?a=0xc6142911…8e06ec) and 80 BTC to Bitcoin. 1M USDT and 99k DAI (bought with USDT) went to xDAI.

Block Data Reference

The attacker's address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x2b528a28…bea6ae#tokentxns

The transaction behind the attack:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x5a504fe7…c37991

This is classified as a Arithmetic Overflows Underflows . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Uranium Finance
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) binance bsc
Attack Technique Math Mistake Exploit / Other
Classification Protocol Logic / Yield Aggregator
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs
Affected Token sRADS, U92, RADS
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website uranium.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @UraniumFinance
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
BNB Chain Ecosystem FTX Bankruptcy Estate
Protocol Links
GitHub Discord

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of math mistake exploit / other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with binance, bsc smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Uranium Finance's contract logic - root cause: protocol logic / yield aggregator
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Likely — with a thorough Math Mistake Exploit / Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $57.2M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Uranium Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (April 2021).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Math Mistake Exploit / Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Arithmetic Overflows Underflows attack class for patterns
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Funds Recovery

54.2%

Recovered

$31.0M

Net Loss

26197599

Security Audit History

Post-Incident Timeline

  • 2025-02-24

    SDNY and @HSISanDiego  seize cryptocurrency worth approximately $31 million related to April 2021 hack of Uranium Finance.

Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Arithmetic Overflows Underflows examples →

Arithmetic Overflows Underflows

Proof-of-Concept Exploits

1 PoC available
poc-exploits - uranium finance
$ Uranium Miscalculation

On-Chain Evidence & References

Sources & References

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