What is a crypto dusting attack, and how do you avoid it?

While it’s unlikely for cryptocurrency users to become victims of dusting episodes, they should still take a few steps to protect themselves against such crypto attacks.

Due to increasingly high transaction fees, especially on the Bitcoin blockchain, it’s become more expensive for a hacker to launch a crypto dusting attack compared to a few years ago. Still, cryptocurrency users should take a few steps to secure their funds.

Since dusting attacks rely on combining analysis of multiple addresses, if a dust fund is not moved, the attackers cannot track a transaction that doesn’t occur to make the connections they need to “deanonymize” the wallets.

Simple measures, including due diligence and education, can go a long way toward tackling these attacks. However, more elaborate methods can also be used to protect a wallet’s funds, and here are some of the most effective practices available:

• Use privacy tools like The Onion Router (TOR) or a virtual private network (VPN) to increase anonymity and strengthen security.
• Use a hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet to automatically create a new address for each new transaction, making it difficult for hackers to trace the thread of your transactions. 
• Use dust conversion services that automatically swap crypto dust into native tokens to use in future trades.

Taking these steps should help users protect their funds. Nevertheless, cryptocurrency users should be aware of other cyber threats besides dusting and deanonymizing attacks. For instance, ransomware is malware designed to deny a user or organization access to their digital files until a sum of money is paid.

Cryptojacking is a type of cybercrime where a criminal secretly uses a victim’s computing power to mine cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency can be useful and efficient technology but can also be at the mercy of malevolent actors who work primarily to steal data and value. This is why users should always use caution and be aware of its risks when dealing with cryptocurrency.