What is crypto-dust
“Crypto-dust” refers to a small amount of cryptocurrency that can be sent out en masse to various wallets. The goals on the part of the sender can be quite different.
In general, “dust” is an amount of cryptocurrency equal to or less than the transaction fee. So, the smallest bitcoin unit is one satoshi – 0.00000001 BTC.
That’s why even 0.00000500 bitcoin is “dust” today. It often settles on exchanges. You can’t trade it.. Thus, it is in a state of suspension.
It is often used for absolutely peaceful purposes – for example, mailing “dust” to wallets is done for promotional purposes, to attract more people to the cryptocurrency or the next project.
However, so-called “dust attacks” have recently spread.. And these are the ones that pose a certain threat.
What is a dust attack?
“Dust attack” is the sending of crypto-dust to a large number of addresses by attackers. As a rule, it is expressed in the fact that fraudsters want to trace the identity of the owner of the purse.
How does this happen?
Blockchain itself does not require any personal information. But the problem is that the transactions in it are visible to all.
Thus, you can track which specific operations and how many of them were performed from a particular address. Dust attack is not a direct way to steal cryptocurrency.
By dropping crypto dust on you, scammers are only trying to trace through a series of your transactions who you are. For the most part, users will not pay attention to million-dollar fractions.
In general, a dust-up can occur in many blockchains, not just Bitcoin. With its help, fraudsters are trying to gain access to personal data of individuals and legal entities.
After that, they begin to use various ways to extract their benefits: threats, extortion, blackmail, and so on.
When crypto-dust is useful
Dust attacks are just one way to use crypto-dust. For the most part, it is completely harmless, and can even be beneficial.
For example, developers can send out dust to test their hardware or updates.
It can also be distributed to wallets if they need a test to eliminate the threat of a hacker attack or other vulnerability.
Traders can profit in the form of dust. After all, every transaction is determined by the price at which you bought and sold.
Sometimes crypto-exchanges offer to exchange crypto-dust for their tokens or some other cryptocurrency.
National governments can also use dust-ups to track potential criminals, terrorists, and others.
How a dust attack works
The first thing crooks count on is people’s inattention to detail. Few people will notice that any shares of cryptocurrency suddenly appeared in the account.
The next thing crooks are counting on is that the recipient of the crypto-dust will start transacting with it as if nothing had happened..
If this does not happen, then the whole idea turns out to be unprofitable.
When a victim of a dust attack sends cryptocurrency to a centralized site, he won’t notice how he sends crypto-dust along with it.
This is an important point, since it is CEX that requests a lot of personal data from customers.
That’s where the scammers are trying to get close to through the mailing of crypto-dust.
The most vulnerable to dusting attacks are cryptocurrencies that use the unspent transaction balance (UTXO) model.
This is because they create a new address for each change from a transaction.
So what do you have to do to avoid becoming a victim of a dust-up?
Ways to guard against a dust attack
The most important thing you should remember: the likelihood of falling for a scammer is not that great.
Holders of cryptocurrency, however, usually do not have a lot of it. And for sent dust, attackers still have to pay transaction fees, which have only grown in recent years in the same Bitcoin.
If no transactions are made, nothing can be traced. If you do actively make transfers, you should take precautions. In general, there are a whole host of them.
But most of them require special education. However, there are also quite simple ones:
- Use tools that increase your anonymity online (assuming, of course, it’s legal in your country);
- Use hierarchically-determined wallets that will themselves create new addresses for each subsequent transaction, making it more difficult for scammers;
- Use software that converts crypto-dust into native tokens immediately.
If you follow these simple steps, the likelihood of falling victim to a dust attack will be greatly reduced.