Since the past few years, cyber-attacks, including attacks in blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, have steadily risen. Malicious elements are also using various strategies to manipulate projects and cheat users. Among those elements, one is called dusting attacks.
Although you may find it offensive, dusting attacks are not trying to rob your capital. Instead, cybercriminals utilize them for user tracking and developing strategies for further manipulations. Consequently, although an instant danger may not arise, these attacks can cause severe consequences gradually.
What Are Dusting Attacks?
Dusting attacks are wide-ranging schemes operating with smaller fractions of cryptocurrencies. This tiny fraction of cryptocurrency is called dust. Scammers and fraudsters transfer tiny amounts to the masses because such amounts are not traceable. They do so to expose the true identity of wallet owners. These crypto amounts are meager, and users have no idea about being dusted. They continue to make transactions through crypto wallets that also include dust money. Then the bad actors trace those transactions, uncover users’ identities, and breach confidentiality.
Along with Know Your Customer information being mandatory worldwide, dusting attacks can expose sensitive personal information. In this way, if an individual owns any other crypto wallet, those addresses are also exposable. By getting all these details, the attackers can launch a serious attack on the user. These attacks may also include widespread phishing attacks. Individuals who possess more significant sums of cryptocurrencies are often physically attacked, and someone can also kidnap their beloveds to demand ransom.
Dust
The name of dusting attacks is derived from a tiny amount of cryptocurrency called dust. If we talk about Bitcoin – the first-ever cryptocurrency effortlessly tradable via Bitcoin Era APP – dust will equal a few dozen of satoshis. The concept emerged from trading small amounts of residues of cryptocurrency in a crypto wallet, such as dust remnants.
Understanding The Working of Dusting Attacks
Firstly, the attackers send a specific type of token to the wallets of potential victims. A few years back, they used to dust many wallet addresses with BTC or other identifiable cryptos. Last year, the meme coin (Dogecoin) craze appeared, an incursion of individuals spewed into the crypto world out of FOMO on instant opportunities to get rich. Bad actors targeted this mindset by transferring tokens based on apparently licit and valid intelligent contracts. To increase their prominence, reputation, and success rate, attackers use crypto exchanges to airdrop and dust their tokens.
Safety Measures for Dusting Attacks
The simplest method to ensure dusting attacks are no longer equivalent to anything else will be utilizing a Hierarchical-Deterministic wallet, also known as an HD wallet. The specialty of these wallets is that they develop a unique public key for each transaction. Thus, if an individual is making transactions with the dust money, it will use a new address, and it would be unimaginable for the attacker to trace it.
Latest and updated crypto wallets usually provide substantial defense against dusting attacks. This type of wallet will automatically report transactions that would involve dust funds. There are crypto wallets that enable you to segregate certain investments showing that these are not spendable. After being marked, those amounts would be exempted from any transactions in the future.
There are other suggestions, such as utilizing a Virtual Private Network or proxy on your setup, which makes it harder for anyone to discover your identity. Besides this, a few cryptocurrency exchanges like BNB allow their users to convert their dust money into the native coin/token of the platform.
Ways To Secure Crypto Wallet
- Avoid uncertified links, as they may lead to a dusting attack.
- Only make transactions with the tokens that are validated.
- Avoid linking your crypto wallet to a DEX to receive airdrops or exchange unidentified tokens. Because connecting means you are authorizing them to withdraw your crypto holdings from your digital wallet.
Final Words
A dusting attack in cryptocurrency refers to transferring a minuscule amount of cryptocurrency to many crypto wallet owners. These attacks mainly aim to reveal users’ identities to get sensitive information for extorting money. However, if an individual is vigilant, he can avoid these dusting attacks.
