A dust attack froze real accounts — why coins you never asked for are a problem

Between Aug. 17 and Aug. 24, wallets that Arkham Intelligence labels as belonging to HTX, an exchange under European Union sanctions, sent nearly 12,000 tiny transfers to addresses linked to Kraken. Each was worth anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars, and some Kraken customers were briefly locked out of their accounts as a result. Kraken says the transfers looked designed to do exactly that: push sanctioned funds into ordinary customers' deposit addresses and trigger automatic restrictions.

The tactic is called a dust attack. On a public blockchain anyone can send anything to any address, and you cannot refuse an incoming transfer. That makes the attack cheap for whoever runs it and expensive for whoever receives it, because your address now carries a traceable link to sanctioned money. In a statement shared with CoinDesk, Kraken said: “We don't know who is behind these attacks, but they likely expect that if sanctioned funds land in a client account, it triggers a full account lock.” Kraken's compliance team restored access while continuing to hold the sanctioned funds, and says it is working with authorities.

The sanctions behind this are recent. The UK sanctioned HTX in May with an asset freeze, saying it had reasonable grounds to suspect the exchange provided financial services to the Russia-linked payment network A7 and to Garantex, itself already sanctioned. HTX rejects those allegations. The EU added HTX to a transaction ban in July, and that ban took effect on Aug. 23, while the transfers were still happening. HTX says an internal review found no official accounts responsible, that it is checking whether the sending wallet was misidentified or a third party was behind it, and that it has submitted materials on 17 Kraken user freeze cases to the courts.

The screening is also widening. In an Aug. 27 compliance notice, KuCoin said it now screens indirect transfers connected to 17 platforms, including HTX, named in the EU regulation as Huobi Global SA, along with Rapira, EXMO, BitPapa, Exnode and others. Users can have transactions held or rejected even if they never sent anything to a listed platform, because KuCoin says it may examine the source of funds, the sending and receiving addresses, and intermediary services along the path. It has not said how many hops back it looks. Binance stopped processing transactions involving HTX and ten other platforms from Aug. 23.

For a beginner, the practical point is that an exchange account is not the same as a wallet you control, and these rules are enforced by the exchange, not by you. If a tiny unexplained deposit shows up, the safest move is to leave it alone rather than move it or try to clean it, avoid mixing it with the rest of your balance, and contact support if your account gets restricted. There is at least some precedent for how authorities read this: in 2022 an unidentified sender pushed ether from the sanctioned mixer Tornado Cash to a number of celebrities, and US authorities later said they would not prioritise enforcement over delayed reports from recipients of unsolicited, nominal transfers. Being sent something is not the same as choosing it, but while your account is frozen, that argument takes time to make. This is information, not legal advice.