What is Dusting Attack?
Let's find out Dusting Attack meaning, definition in crypto, what is Dusting Attack, and all other detailed facts.
Dust refers to a small and unnoticeable quantity of coins or tokens. For instance, the smallest unit of BTC is 1 satoshi.
Dusting attacks, on the other hand, occur when malicious individuals take advantage of users who fail to notice the little number on their wallet address. They start "dusting" a large number of addresses by transferring a couple of satoshis to them.
After that, they perform mixed research of those addressed in an attempt to figure out which ones are from the same crypto wallet.
The attacker can use the dust transaction to keep an eye on the performance within the wallet effectively enough to get data about the identity of the owner. In other words, once the attacker has dusted the wallet, he will track information of the affected accounts and unmask what businesses or people are linked to it.
They can utilize the data in phishing scams as well.
An attack like this happened in 2019 when a big amount of dust transactions were made within Litecoin wallets. However, it didn’t take long for identifying the source of the attack before major harm was done.
Later, the attackers revealed themselves indicating that their aim was to advertise their mining pool to the Litecoin enthusiasts. Even though no harm was done, the event did showcase how easy it is to perform such acts. Similar attempts can easily be done specifically on Litecoin or even any other public blockchain.