Kraken suffered nearly 12,000 "dust attacks," causing some customer accounts to be temporarily inaccessible

According to Bloomberg, Kraken stated that some customers were temporarily unable to access their accounts after receiving tiny amounts of cryptocurrency from wallets associated with the sanctioned competitor HTX. Kraken referred to these transfers as "dust attacks," believing their purpose may be to trigger compliance reviews on the platform by spreading sanctioned funds.

Data from Etherscan and Arkham Intelligence shows that from August 17 to 24, the wallet sent nearly 12,000 small transfers to addresses related to Kraken, most of which were worth only a few cents or a few dollars.

Kraken stated that it has restored account access for affected customers while continuing to withhold the relevant sanctioned funds as required and is cooperating with authorities to limit the impact. HTX denied initiating these transfers and stated that it is investigating, with possible reasons including source identification errors or malicious activities by third parties.