In mid-November, Kronos Research, a Taipei-based cryptocurrency trading and investment firm, experienced a security breach where stolen API keys were used to siphon off $25 million from the company’s treasury. The firm has now initiated talks with the hacker responsible for the unauthorized access, proposing the return of 90% of the stolen funds in exchange for dropping any legal action, as revealed on Etherscan.
Kronos Research confirmed the breach via a post on X, with on-chain experts ZachXBT and Lookonchain verifying that the attacker predominantly targeted stablecoins. Despite the firm acknowledging approximately $26 million in crypto asset losses, it reassured the public that it remains financially sound, vowing to cover all losses internally without affecting its partners.
This incident highlights a growing trend of public, on-chain negotiations between hackers and their victims. Similar cases, such as the KyberSwap exploit and Curve Finance hack, have seen negotiations facilitated through transaction signing, with victims offering bounties as incentives for the return of stolen funds. The rise in such incidents underscores the vulnerability of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, with over $1.2 billion pilfered from these systems throughout the year, according to DeFiLlama.
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