A dusting attack is a type of attack where an attacker sends small amounts of the cryptocurrency (known as “dust”) to a large number of addresses. Attackers do dusting attacks in order to de-anonymize the owners of those addresses. Dusting attacks can be challenging to detect because they resemble Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) or a leftover crypto asset from an executed transaction.
If the crypto assets sent through the dusting attack were used for transactions, the attacker could see a list of transactions and their destination addresses. Later, the attacker can use this information for various purposes, such as phishing, scams, or targeted spam campaigns.
However, dusting attacks are not always dangerous. The reason is that blockchain analysis institutions deliberately carry out dusting attacks to conduct research or have cooperation contracts with the government. Dusting attacks can also be made to test the throughput or bandwidth of a network.
Besides a dusting attack, find out another crypto attack in the crypto industry in the following article.