Taipei-based trading platform, Kronos Research, has recently suffered a cybersecurity breach, resulting in a significant loss of $26 million in crypto assets. Crypto on-chain sleuth, ZachXBT, was the first to report the hack, providing details on the fund outflow and confirming the magnitude of the incident.
The platform has confirmed that unauthorized access to some of its API keys was the cause of the security breach. As a result, over $26 million worth of Ether (ETH) has been lost. Kronos Research has immediately taken action by halting all trading operations and initiating a thorough investigation into the breach. This is the first time the company has suspended trading since 2018, and their primary goal is to recover the losses swiftly.
Kronos Research has reassured its users that despite the breach and losses, the platform remains in good standing. The company stated, “All losses will be covered internally, no partners will be affected.”
This breach comes shortly after a significant attack on crypto exchange platform Poloniex, which resulted in losses exceeding $100 million. Kronos Research uses the WOO platform and operates as the market maker for the spot and perpetual futures market. Consequently, WOO X temporarily paused its operations in response to the breach.
However, within an hour, WOO resumed spot and perpetual trading activities, along with asset withdrawals. The exchange also noticed a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on its website on the same day. In response, WOO stated, “We are taking steps with adjusting CloudFlare to mitigate future outages. Trading currently remains operational, all users’ funds are safe, and withdrawals remain open.”
The attacks on Kronos Research and WOO have raised concerns within the online crypto community, questioning the relationship between both firms. One user compared the unclear connection of Kronos and WOO to that of FTX and Alameda Research.
