How to avoid a Dust Attack with a Bitcoin ATM (or without)

Dust attacks are attempts to de-anonymize your address. This is done by sending a small amount of crypto to you in the expectation that you will use those funds and thus discover your data. Dust attack does not give the attacker access to your funds, but a scammer with your data may blackmail you by e-mail, send a personalized scam, or prepare a phishing attack. Today, you will learn more about dust attacks.

What is a dust attack and how Bitcoin ATMs in Madrid could help?

Dust attacks are attempts to de-anonymize your address. This is done by sending a small amount of the resource to your address in the expectation that you will use them and thus discover your data. Dust attack does not give the attacker access to your funds, but having your data, it can blackmail you by e-mail, send a personalized scam, or prepare a phishing attack. Today you will learn more about dust attacks.

What is dust?

In crypto, the term dust or dust refers to a very small amount of coins or tokens. Taking bitcoin as an example, the smallest unit of BTC is 1 satoshi (0.0000001 BTC), so the dust can be several hundred satoshi.

It used to be used for useless, very small amounts that remained after transactions. Now, dust is also referred to in the context of new "dust" attacks.

What is dust attack?

A dusting attack is a new type of malicious activity performed by scammers who send small amounts of coins or tokens (dust) to thousands, sometimes even hundreds of thousands of addresses on the network. There are various reasons for these attacks.

The main purpose of these attacks is to track the wallet transaction data sufficiently to de-anonymize the wallet owner and launch a targeted phishing attack on the victim to get the user's crypto.

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Phishing Attack as a Consequence of Dust Transaction

Another strategy, often confused with dusting attacks, is to send the malicious link contained in the memo tag along with the dust transaction. This is actually a dust phishing attack and should not be confused with a dust attack.

This strategy is common for coins that support tag functionality, such as Stellar (XLM) and XRP (XRP). The message contained in the memo tag may look like an "invitation from airdrop xlmfree.org". 

A user who clicked on the link once may have been scammed by sending their resources to an unknown address or sharing their 24-word recovery phrase. It is not recommended to interact in any way with the links contained in the memo tags for the sake of the safety of the funds.

How do fraudsters know my wallet address? 

Since transaction information on most blockchains is public and accessible across all chain explorers, scammers have no difficulty seeing transactions online. While they can still see different addresses and the amount of coins shipped, they don't have any information about the identity of the address owners.

Should I worry about getting dust transactions?

No, you don't need to worry about dust attacks if you are already aware of what it is. Dust resources (a small amount of crypto) in your wallet do not give anyone control over your funds. If you experience a dust attack, just ignore it and try not to interact with the "dust". 

For coins such as Bitcoin and BTC, you can use Ledger Live's coin check to avoid transferring those small amounts of funds that you received as part of the attack. Another good practice is to use different receiving addresses for your crypto each time.

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Watch out for dust on your wallet. Does it come from other transactions or from the attacker?

‍ For dust phishing attacks that contain a message in a memo tag, just ignore it and do not follow the links they promise.

While dust transactions on public blockchains are unavoidable, you can stay safe by approaching trading with caution and focus.

Counteracting a dust attack without a Bitcoin ATM

A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

- WarGames 

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The same strategy described in the quote above is worth adopting for dusting attacks. This is because the attacker assumes that you will be using his "dust", i.e. by operating on him, you will combine him with another wallet that belongs to you.

Therefore, the only winning move is not to use these resources at all. You can convert the dust into another cryptocurrency or mark these assets to remember not to use them. As the latter option is more technical in nature, it is easiest to do with a simple conversion. The most popular exchanges such as FTX, Binance, and Gemini all offer this feature, so you don't need to stress. 

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‍Use a Bitcoin ATM to defend yourself against a dust attack

However, the best way to counteract dust attacks is to withdraw funds in bitcoins. This way, you will never link these funds to any wallet again. However, take into account that it is not worth paying less than about PLN 200 in a Bitcoin ATM. Therefore, you should withdraw these "dust" funds along with your other funds. If you want to merge them with other wallets, make sure they are disposable wallets and will not allow the scammer to track you down.

Let's recap: How dangerous are dust attacks?

As you can see, dust attacks aren't that serious. It is enough to be careful and vigilant, or simply use Bitcoin ATMs in Madrid or any city. The process comes down to mass transfer of small amounts of cryptocurrencies to various exchanges in order to track transactions and discover which addresses are related to each other.

Even if you fall victim to a dust attack and fail to relapse, you don't need to worry. Dusting attacks are not particularly dangerous because they come down to social engineering.

Instead of experiencing a technical exploit where your assets can be directly stolen, in the event of a dusting attack, the scammer expects you to perform manual steps that discover your anonymity. Which means you cannot be touched by them as long as you are aware of what is happening.

Has anyone merged all your transactions through the dust and discovered your true identity through a data leak? Is the same person blackmailing you by sending you a message with your name on it, suggesting that they are capable of doing something much more malicious? Our other Bitcoin Blackmail article comes to mind.

Don't worry! There are far worse security threats (such as cryptojacking, ransomware, etc.) and the person on the Internet who knows your name is the least threat of all.

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