Hacker siphons off $25 million from Kronos Research platform

The Taiwanese trading firm Kronos Research said the attack resulted in the attacker siphoning off an ‘insignificant portion of its capital’.

In the interest of transparency
Around 4 hours ago, we experienced unauthorized access of some of our API keys. We paused all trading while we conduct an investigation. Potential losses are not a significant portion of our equity and we aim to resume trading as soon as possible.

— Kronos Research ? (@ResearchKronos) November 18, 2023

On-chain sleuth ZachXBT, commenting under the company’s X post, said that potential losses amounted to around ~$25 million in Ethereum.

Sorry should be $25M not $20.3M****

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) November 18, 2023

According to Kronos representatives, the attack occurred due to unauthorized access to API keys. The company paused trading for the duration of the investigation.

The shutdown of operations led to problems on the WOO X exchange, founded and run by Kronos.

It looks like people are having trouble on @_WOO_X! We’ll update you if we know more!

ft: @trading_peter, @yohanandz, @cryptodreams11, @panda___yang, pic.twitter.com/1OgZbrDEuO

— Smol News (@NewsInSmol) November 18, 2023

The trading platform later said that user funds were safe.

Status update
— First and foremost, all client assets are safe
— TLDR our largest liquidity provider Kronos Research recently experienced a hack that caused them to pause all trading on WOO X
— Since Kronos Research is the primary liquidity provider for spot markets and around… https://t.co/sDR8QHvmZC

— WOO X (@_WOO_X) November 18, 2023

“As Kronos Research is the main liquidity provider for spot markets and around 40% for perpetual futures, we have temporarily paused trading via WOO X to protect user positions,” the project’s representatives explained.

A few hours after the announcement, trading across all pairs resumed.

Earlier ZachXBT suspected the theft of 1,282 ETH (~$2 million at the time of the attack) from the CoinSpot exchange as a result of a hacking incident.

In November, on-chain analyst reported a $27 million hack of a crypto wallet.