What is a Dusting Attack?

1. What is a DustingAttack? https://medium.com/coinscapture/what-is-a-dusting-attack-a2de0c0752f2 The increased corruption and cyber crimes on this universe have not spared the cryptosphere even. Storing the currency i.e. completely virtual on an exchange or third party wallet is also getting tougher day-by-day as there are many new and unique types of malicious activity emerging every day. Dusting attack is one of them, in which scammers steal the private information of the crypto-wallets by sending a small number of coins into your wallet. Let’s understand how it occurs? What is Dust? Dust is the smallest fraction of cryptocurrency in the wallet that is most commonly ignored by the crypto-investors. This is generally the amount that is left over when traders on exchanges change from one cryptocurrency to another and are much smaller than

2. the required transaction fees. For eg. In the case of Bitcoin- a few hundred Satoshi. Dust can also be termed as “stuck coins” because they cannot be traded. Taking advantage of this scenario, the dusting attack came into the picture in which hackers send negligible amounts of coins to countless wallets for quite some time. How does Dusting Attack work? Dusting attacks start by sending dust (negligible amounts of coins) to multiple wallet addresses. Once the dust enters the wallets, using this dusty transaction remaining all the other transactions done through these wallets can be easily traceable. Thus, hackers start tracking all the dusty wallet’s transactions on different blockchain with the help of algorithms which ultimately links, to the address indirectly revealing the owner of this wallet. Once this private information is received, it can be used for phishing attacks or blackmailing crypto enthusiasts. Initially, this attack began with Bitcoins address, but gradually it spread to all cryptocurrencies that run on the public blockchain. Privacy is the utmost asset that has to be maintained by all crypto investors as the majority of the coins are stored on an exchange or third party wallets which can be stolen easily by knowing user’s private information (Email-id, password, contact number, etc.). Dust limit is calculated on the basis of the size of input and output. For bitcoin transactions (non-segwit) it is computed to 546 satoshis and 294 satoshis for native segwit transactions, that means transaction equal to or smaller than 546 satoshis will be rejected by validating nodes considering as spam.

3. How can you prevent dusting attack? •Never store your cryptocurrency on an exchange or in any third party wallets for a longer period. •Use multiple ways to store your coins (wallets/exchange/address) •Always a use new address for every new transaction •Personal information is always linked to the wallet, so use only secure and trustworthy exchanges •Do not reveal any information about cryptocurrency with unknown persons or friends or on social media. •Use cold wallets or hardware wallets to sign transaction offline, for more information read our blog •Never the use same Email id on all exchanges used for trading and always login trusted devices that are protected from Phishing. •Always use privacy browsers like DuckDuckgo •Always enable 2-factor authentication. There are many other malicious activities like Cryptojacking, Ransomware, and Phishing (keep in touch with us for deeper knowledge on each of them) that you must be aware of and protect ourselves as they are growing rapidly hampering the cryptosphere. The way to safeguard from such attacks is installing a VPN with a reliable antivirus program for all the gadgets connected to the internet.