What is a Dusting Attack?
A dusting attack (also called a dust attack or dusting) is a malicious act where hackers/scammers try to figure out your personal information by sending you small amounts of cryptocurrency (dust). The scammers hope that you try to sell or interact with the tokens in your wallet once you notice the tokens in your wallet. Once you do this, the scammers will track your wallet and transaction activity with the hopes of ‘unmasking’ your identity.
Another type of dusting attack that has become quite popular, especially on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), is creating and distributing fake tokens. Scammers will send fake tokens to thousands of random BSC wallet addresses. The ID from these transactions will usually contain a link to a malicious website in the transaction memo.
The best defense against dusting attacks is not interacting with unknown or randomly sent cryptocurrencies.
How Does a Dusting Attack Work?
While dust attacks do not give an attacker direct access to your funds, it is still worth noting that dusting can lead to disastrous consequences. By spending or interacting with the dust, hackers can follow the movement of tokens from wallet to wallet. Then, by using information from different sources, scammers can use various tools and techniques to determine the identities behind addresses. Dust attacks can be very sophisticated, requiring different types of analyses.
Government agencies and law enforcement also use dust attacks to connect a person, group of persons or company to a specific address. When used by these bodies, dusting can be used to target tax evaders, money launderers, and other types of criminals.
Dust attacks shed light on the pseudo-anonymity of many cryptocurrencies. In other words, while wallet addresses are not immediately linked to real-world identities, the right tools and research can sometimes reveal sensitive or personal information.
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