Dusting Attack
Sending tiny amounts of crypto to many addresses to track and unmask who controls them.
'Dust' is an amount so small it's barely worth anything — a few cents of a coin. An attacker sprays it across thousands of wallets, then watches the blockchain. If that dust later gets combined with your other funds in a transaction, it links your addresses together.
The goal is deanonymization: tying a cluster of addresses to one person, then targeting them for phishing or extortion. It doesn't steal anything directly. The defense is simple — don't spend the dust. Many wallets now flag suspicious tiny deposits so you can leave them untouched.
Related terms
A scam that tricks you into revealing keys or signing a malicious transaction by posing as something you trust.
AddressA short string of letters and numbers that identifies where crypto can be sent on a blockchain.
TransactionA signed instruction that moves value or data on a blockchain, recorded permanently once miners or validators confirm it.
Sybil AttackAn attack where one actor spins up many fake identities to gain outsized influence over a network.