Litecoin Dusting Attack Hit Almost 300,000 Addresses, Says New Report

Litecoin, the 5th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was recently hit by a dusting attack and according to reports, exactly 294,582 accounts were affected. This figure was made known in a tweet by Glassnode, a blockchain data analysis firm.

Glassnode posted the tweet about the attack which was targeted at Binance addresses, also hinting that there was a similar occurrence a few months ago in April. The tweet however didn’t reveal any specifics about the previous attack.

“The recent LTC dusting attack on Binance affected 294,582 addresses. During our analysis, we also uncovered a similar large-scale attack in April.”

The attack took place exactly a week ago on Friday the 9^th of August 2019. Binance had earlier reported the attack, stating that a small fraction of LTC – 0.00000546) was sent to 50 addresses. This is much smaller than the Glassnode figure. Binance Academy product lead, James Jager, also said the attack affected every active Litecoin address, and that it originated from a mining pool in Russia.

Jager has also said that the person behind the attack has reached out. Jager said:

“They reached out to express that their intent was to advertise their mining pool to the users of Litecoin, however, it’s unclear from our perspective or anyone else’s as to whether there were alternative motives.”

What is A Dusting Attack?

In an official Binance Academy publication, the exchange explains what a dusting attack is and further tries to raise awareness about other malicious activity including Cryptojacking, Ransomware and Phishing. According to Binance:

“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.”

After this is done, the attackers can now monitor transactions carried out by any of these addresses. This data is then used to “perform a combined analysis of several addresses” to determine the person or entity who owns the wallet.

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