Dusting Attacks - Reading Assignment

[Chris78]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?
   break the privacy of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency.

2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
   the identity of the person can be identified.

3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
   yes for both

4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?
   The Samourai Wallet team implemented a real-time alert for dust tracking as well as a “Do Not Spend” feature that let users mark suspicious funds, so these are not included in future transactions.

[Alko89]

1. To break the privacy of the address owner.
2. His privacy might be compromised.
3. Neither. A wallet should though have an option to disable these addresses from being used if dust attack is detected.
4. Samurai Wallet offers Do Not Spend feature.

[Kyle]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?

the goal is to eventually be able to link the dusted address and wallets to the owners

2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?

the victim can opened up to phishing or cyber -extortion

3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
   By the address always changing after each transaction it can protect against dusting attacks

4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?

the added the ability to flag a suspicious transaction. so it can track that flagged that transaction to users

[Ongdanhchet]

1. The goal of a dusting attack is to eventually be able to link the dusted addresses and wallets to their respective companies or individuals.

2. If the dust attack is successful attackers can use the knowledge against their targets through elaborated phishing attacks or cyber extortion threats.

3. Dusting attacks can work for both because the dusting can link different addresses.

4. The Samourai Wallet implemented a real time alert for dust tracking as well as a “Do Not Spend” feature that lets users mark suspicious funds, so these are not included in future transactions.

[Gss147]

@Grant_Hawkins

• What is the goal of a dusting attack?
• If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
• Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
• What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?

• The goal of a dusting attack is to link bitcoin transactions to an wallet, individual, or entity.
• The victim of a dusting attack is at risk of extortion, phishing attacks, malware attacks, and privacy breached.
• I think if you the use utxo linked to the dusting attack, then it can be linked to both deterministic wallets, although I think it is more difficult because of the wallet setting up a new address each time.
• Samarai wallet contacted clients about possible transactions that they should not spend because of being linked to dusting attacks.

[MarkusJohansson]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?
   Break the privacy of BTC users by sending “dust-transactions” to their wallets
2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
   they can extort you or get to know yor TX history and therefore potentially rob you.
3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
   both, because once you use the dust it will be traceable
4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?
   feature that identify suspect transfers and flag them for the user to know to not to spend this UTXO

[LongTermSmoothie]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?
   The goal is to de-anonymize the private transactions of a user by sending small amounts to a public adress.

2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
   Sender and receiver could be linked with a dusted addresses in a transaction. If the addresses are linked to some personal data the attacker could expose the identity of the users.

3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
   They can work for both types. The linkage is independent from how the private keys are generated, but rather how a wallet constructs a transaction.

4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?
   Samourai Wallet identifies suspicious small transactions and labels them visible to the user as do not spend UTXOs.

[Ondrej.S]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?
2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?

1. The goal is to deanonymize the user by sending tiny amounts of coins to their wallet addresses
2. Phishing or malware attack, blackmail and extortion
3. Both
4. It uses “do not spend” feature with an alert

[tanja]

1. To deanonymise a wallet user, identify the entity behind it

2. Only if the dust is being used, then it can be used to trace back. If that is not being made, scammers can do phishing attacks and cyber extrotions.

3. Some wallets notify the user when a small amount of btc is received. You can then put it into a vault.

4. We have not spoken about Samourai Wallet yet but it does notify when possible dust arrives

[Ed1]

• What is the goal of a dusting attack?
  Try to de-anominize the user.
• If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
  They know who you are and try to trick you with phishing emails, or other ways to scam you.
• Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
  Yes, for both try not to use the small amounts
• What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?
  It uses “do not spend” feature
  [/quote]

[Adam1]

1. Dusting attacks are performed for the purpose of identifying the person or company behind the wallet.

2. the hacker can use the knowledge against the target by implementing complicated phishing attacks or cyber extortion threats.

3. type 1

4. they had an alert for dusting attacks and a do not spend feature that let customers identify suspicious funds.

[CryptoVic]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack? Dusting attacks were created to de-anonymize users by sending dust (tiny amounts of coins) tx’s to their wallets.
2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk? The user, either a person or a company can be identified. This information can then be used in elaborate phishing attack or extortion threaths.
3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both? It would seem to work for both
   unless either wallet had some kind of alert feature.
4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks? The wallet
   implemented a real-time alert and “DO NOT SPEND” feature to warn user not to spend
   suspicious dust funds that would compromise their identity.

[Mucha-B]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?

• It attempts to identify which address belongs to the wallet the dust was sent to with the aim of de-anonymizing the wallet owner identity.

2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?

• The victims true identity could be found out and they could be exposed to cyber extortion or phishing.

3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?

(Correct me If I’m wrong)

• Anonymity is maintained more in the Type-2 wallet more than the Type-1 because the ease of creating new wallets in Type-2 ensures that the user is ahead of the curve because the user might receive the the Dust in a wallet and decide to never use the wallet again but instead create child wallets that they can use instead to carry out other transactions and never spend the Dust.

4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?

• The Samourai Wallet team implemented a real-time alert for dust tracking as well as a “Do Not Spend” feature that let users mark suspicious funds, so these are not included in future transactions.

[Annegret]

1."A dusting attack refers to a relatively new kind of malicious activity where hackers and scammers try and break the privacy of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency users by sending tiny amounts of coins to their personal wallets. "
2.“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.” attempt to de-anonymize blockchain networks, “the attackers may use this knowledge against their targets, either through elaborated phishing attacks or cyber-extortion threats.”
3. No
4. “The Samourai Wallet team implemented a real-time alert for dust tracking as well as a “Do Not Spend” feature that let users mark suspicious funds, so these are not included in future transactions.”

[0xMac]

1. To deanonymize users.
2. Enough transactions including dust links user to an identity.
3. Potentially both.
4. Wallet sends user a “dust alert” when receiving dust.

[Crypto_James]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?
The goal of a dusting attack would be to find out the identity behind an anonymous blockchain address.

2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
They can use the identity to extort, steal, or use phishing methods to take crypto from the user.

3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
No wallet protects you if you spend the dust you were sent.

4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?
Samourai wallet has a feature that allows you to mark the dust that was sent to you as “Do Not Spend”. So you will never spend the dust that was sent to you by accident.

[Grace_KN]

• What is the goal of a dusting attack?
  The goal of a dusting attack is to link the dusted addresses and wallets to their respective companies or individuals.

• If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
  The attackers may use their knowledge against their victims to do elaborated phishing attacks or cyber-extortion threats.

• Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
  It is not impossible since dust is sent to wallets.

• What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?
  They use features that automatically report suspicious transactions to their users.

[linlin00]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?
To deanonymized the address of bitcoin which is belonged to one person.

2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
I think his funds will be stolen.
3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
I think is type-2, because type-2 can create a lot of wallets, once the connection between wallets has been identified, these wallets will be in danger.
4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?
Just don’t care about these small satoshis, let it be there.

[biffen96]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?
The goal of a dusting attack is to de-anonymize the privacy of a user or firm by sending small amounts of cryptocurrency to multiple addresses.

2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?
Victim will then become target of ransom ware or phishing expeditions

3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?
No, because when a user spends funds there is (usually) no way to prevent it from using those dust funds. Some wallets (see Samourai wallet) allow to freeze those funds.

4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?
Samourai Wallet sends an alert to their users on suspicious or dust transactions, they also implemented a “do not spend” feature to allow users to mark those suspicious funds and prevent them from using them.

[MarcisB]

1. What is the goal of a dusting attack?

• To link addresses to individuals.

2. If a dusting attack is successful, how is the victim at risk?

• If a high balance address is linked to some individual, this individual can be targeted for phishing or extorted by attackers (also tax authorities).

3. Do dusting attacks work for type-1 HD wallets, type-2, or both?

• If a new address is created for every transaction, the attacker would see if his dust was in this one transaction. That means, he would be able to link two addresses, but couldn’t see other transactions of these individuals.

4. What features did Samourai Wallet add to protect against dusting attacks?

• It alerts the user of dust transactions.
• It allows the user to mark suspicious UTXOs which will not be included in future transactions.