Kraken Hit by 12,000 HTX-Linked Dust Transfers as Sanctions Checks Lock Customer Accounts

From 17 to 24 August, Kraken temporarily disabled trading for several accounts. These were the accounts of traders who had received almost 12,000 unsolicited cryptocurrency transfers to exchange addresses from associated wallets that appeared on sanctions lists.

Most of the exchanges were fractions of a cent to a few US dollars. The exchange described this activity as a “dust attack” to obfuscate the sanctioned funds across multiple unrelated accounts; Kraken later enabled access while holding funds in isolation.

It did not identify the sender. On public blockchains, these actions cannot be prevented on the recipient side, as anyone can send any amount of coins to a known address without the recipient’s consent, allowing unsolicited receipts.

Kraken suspects this is what the campaign relied on to trigger reviews of unrelated users.