Understanding Litecoin's Dusting Attack: What Happened and Why

In the tweet, the team explained that around 50 Binance Litecoin addresses received a fractional amount of Litecoin, which the exchange's security team identified as a part of large-scale dusting attack.

Jan Happel, co-founder of blockchain data provider Glassnode, looked into the dusting attack to confirm the extent of it.

The key to a dusting attack is the unspent transaction output.

The concept of dusting attacks became prominent in 2018, when Samourai Wallet warned its users regarding a dusting attack targeting a large number of Bitcoin wallets.

Dusting attacks are not only limited to Bitcoin or Litecoin but can be done on any public blockchain.

"The person behind the dusting attack owns a mining pool based out of Russia, EMCD[dot]io.

The owner of the pool was not aware that he was subjecting all these users to a dusting attack and spreading fear among the Litecoin community.

"It's interesting to note, that even if this was not the intent of the mining pool owner, he provided a base for malicious actors to analyze. You see, the person responsible for conducting the dusting attack doesn't necessarily have to be the one collecting the data, they can just merely be providing a service so that someone else can collect all the information and analyze it at a later date."

The 24 hours after the attack saw the price rise approximately 5%.How do dusting attacks work?To begin with, hackers send a tiny fraction of any given cryptocurrency to a large group of addresses.

Dusting as a toolSometimes, dusting can also be used as a marketing tool to advertise a service or raise awareness of a product.