What is a Dusting Attack?

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What is a Dusting Attack - https//medium.com/coin
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What is a Dusting Attack https//medium.com/coi
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• 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. Lets understand how
  it occurs?

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What is a Dusting Attack https//medium.com/coi
nscapture/what-is-a-dusting-attack-a2de0c0752f2

• 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 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.

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What is a Dusting Attack https//medium.com/coin
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• 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
  wallets 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.

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What is a Dusting Attack https//medium.com/coin
scapture/what-is-a-dusting-attack-a2de0c0752f2

• 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 users 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.

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What is a Dusting Attack https//medium.com/coin
scapture/what-is-a-dusting-attack-a2de0c0752f2

• 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.

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What is a Dusting Attack https//medium.com/coin
scapture/what-is-a-dusting-attack-a2de0c0752f2

• 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.
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