Attack Alert: Litecoin Users Hit by a Dusting Attack
151One of the largest exchanges, Binance recently shared a tweet about Litecoin users experiencing a large-scale “dusting attack” on their cryptocurrency network. Dusting Attack Targets […]
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151One of the largest exchanges, Binance recently shared a tweet about Litecoin users experiencing a large-scale “dusting attack” on their cryptocurrency network.
Dusting Attack Targets Litecoin Users
According to Binance, users of Litecoin, the 5th largest cryptocurrency (in terms of market cap) has recently suffered malicious activity on its network aimed at compromising the privacy of the users. The attack in question is called a “dusting attack”. Binance also has shared a detailed article by the Binance Academy explaining this relatively new kind of attacking technique wherein scammers and hackers attempt to break the privacy of crypto users. In this hacking attempt, the hacker will send a small/tiny amount of cryptocurrency to user’s personal wallets and then try to track the transactional activity of each of the addresses.
In the context of this attack, dust refers to a very small amount of coins or tokens; so small that the “users don’t even notice”. As per Binance article, the hacker will send “dust” to several addresses and then track the transactions on those wallets to identify the person or company behind each wallet and then make them a victim of phishing or cyber-extortion.
The transactional activity of these wallets is then tracked down by the attackers, who perform a combined analysis of several addresses as an attempt to identify the person or company behind each wallet, the blog reads.
A Reddit user recently shared that they received 0.00000546 LTC in their account and they are unsure about why they would receive such a small amount of LTC. It is possible that the user may have been targeted by the dusting attack.
This isn’t the first time that a dusting attack has happened. Similar attacks on Bitcoin addresses was recorded back in October 2018. Samourai Wallet, a crypto wallet firm had tweeted;
If you have recently received a very small amount of BTC in your wallet unexpectedly, you may be the target of a "dusting attack" designed to deanonymise you by linking your inputs together – Samourai users can mark this utxo as "Do Not Spend" to nip the attack in the bud. pic.twitter.com/23MLFj4eXQ
— Samourai Wallet (@SamouraiWallet) October 25, 2018
The firm quickly launched a new feature called, “Do Not Spend” which led users to mark such dust funds as Do not spend – and henceforth, these were not included in future transactions.
The post Attack Alert: Litecoin Users Hit by a Dusting Attack appeared first on Coingape.
