Kronos Research, a Taipei-based market maker, trading firm and venture capital fund, witnessed the withdrawal of significant amounts of crypto assets due to a breach of its security system.
Kronos Breach: Investigation ongoing
On Sunday, November 19, Kronos Research – via a post on X (formerly Twitter) – announced a security incident involving unauthorized access to API keys. As a result, the company lost a significant amount of crypto funds and has halted all trading activities in an effort to launch a full investigation into the incident.
In the interest of transparency
About 4 hours ago we had unauthorized access to some of our API keys. We have halted all trading while we conduct an investigation. Potential losses do not represent a significant portion of our assets and we aim to resume trading as soon as possible.— Kronos Research 🟠 (@ResearchKronos) November 18, 2023
A map of the money outflow by on-chain sleuth ZachXBT put Kronos’ losses at more than $25 million in Ether. In a follow-up post on Xthe company also confirmed that losses amount to approximately $26 million in crypto assets.
Funds outflow from Kronos Wallet | Source: X/ZachXBT
In its initial announcement, Kronos revealed that the potential losses do not represent a significant portion of its equity. Meanwhile, the trading company said in its latest update that all losses will be covered internally and no partners will be affected.
While Kronos has not yet provided an update on the resumption process, the company did say it aims to resume trading as soon as possible.
This $26 million attack on Kronos Research represents the third largest crypto theft in November 2023. Before this latest incident, data from blockchain security firm Certik revealed that approximately $173 million was lost to crypto attacks in November, with the Poloniex hack worth of $113 million was the most important. most notable yet.
How does this hack affect WOO X?
Interestingly, Kronos is not the only one affected by this security incident, as WOO WOO
In an address on the X platformWOO announced a temporary pause on all trading to protect users’ positions from a lack of liquidity. However, the exchange emphasized that all customer money is safe.
At the time of writing, WOO X has resumed trading on both the spot and perpetual futures markets. Meanwhile, the exchange claims that customers can now withdraw any assets.
Nevertheless, the trading platform has faced some backlash from the online crypto community some people point out the unclear relationship with Kronos.
Cryptocurrency total market cap on the daily timeframe | Source: TOTAL chart on TradingView
Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView