Dust Attack on Kraken: Why 12,000 Tiny Deposits Froze Customer Accounts

If your account at a crypto exchange is frozen without warning, it may have nothing to do with you. Between August 17 and August 24, 2026, Kraken received almost 12,000 tiny deposits from wallets that analytics firms attribute to the sanctioned exchange HTX. The amounts mostly ranged from a few cents to a few dollars. That was enough for the exchange's automated sanctions screening: affected accounts were temporarily frozen until the checks were complete. Kraken has since restored access and is holding back only the flagged funds. What you should take from this is set out in three steps further down, and the most important one is this: do not touch small amounts of unknown origin. Dust Attack on Kraken: What Happened Between August 17 and 24 Within eight days, Kraken customers received almost 12,000 transfers that nobody had requested. Several trade publications consistently report amounts in the range of a few cents to a few dollars per transfer. The blockchain analytics service Arkham Intelligence attributes the sending wallet to the exchange HTX, which formerly traded under the name Huobi. Kraken has classified the events as an attack rather than an accident. A spokesperson for ...