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If you received  0.00000546 BTC, where did it come from and do I need to be worried?” If you’ve received a small amount of BTC and aren’t sure where it came from, you may be a victim of a dusting attack. Learn how they may affect you.

Visit - https://cryptomaa.com/btc/received-0-00000546-btc-for-free-scam-dusting-attack/

Dusting Attack is only profitable on the wallets with huge number of funds.

If an individual person holds large amount of Bitcoin in a wallet it is truly unsafe as the best way to save large number of funds in a secure way is a hardware wallet.

Using a hardware wallet can solve this problem at some extended for individual owner but its still a problem for the wallets working under a crypto company which has thousands of Bitcoin saved in a signal wallet.

You can check this thread to get some important info on how the attack is made and how can we prevent it. Also we can concluded that this is already happing from long time.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=282238.0

Not only by holding huge number of funds can get attack, but they are targeting to the users who are using same btc address for high volume of transaction so when they target they get good amount of btc on hacking. That is why it is recommended to not use same wallet address to receive high volume of transaction which can cause you in trouble. If you are to use same address then better transfer the btc to another address immediately so that they cannot track your transactions.

The article says,


How can hackers track my identity using a small transaction? Can someone knowledgeable explain this? Looking at the nature of the attack, it looks very similar to the ransomware attack we faced earlier. If that is the case, only tax evading big bitcoin hoarders should be worried.

This is very scary news indeed. My Wife I remember got hacked in her blockchain Bitcoin wallet a few years ago and we found the hacker was using an IP out of Indonesia and another time she got hacked was out of Thailand, we reported both I.PS but of course in those days it was a highly unregulated market, more so than now so I doubt police ever did anything to catch the hackers, as things like human trafficking and murder are much higher on their list of priorities and things like drugs etc. I sincerely hope an anti hacking task force will be put into play all over the world and especially in Asian countries where Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin is very big. We have almost no Bitcoin now so I doubt they will be targeting us, with dust or no dust.

Ah i remember binance posting this in their social media account, but since i don't receive it then i don't really care about it but looks like i need to be careful in the future.

Binance make article about it and explain it
and looks like this is not the first time this dusting attack happen.

is it because your wife wallet got dusted or because something else? to me it sounds like phishing attack or something similar, it's not possible from dusting attack attacker would get your private key or something similar. dusting attack can be avoided, you can simply omit this from your input when you make a transaction.

As long as you don't share your private key you should not be worried.

If you want to eliminate any risk, just go for a hardware wallet in case you didn't do it already.

Exactly my thoughts, how can they steal your identify?

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And as far as I know, if you received dust amount, and it came from a tainted bitcoin, and if authorities is following it and have tracked it to let's say your exchange address, it may put your account at risk. That's the only thing I can think of right now that might negatively impact on everyone who has received it, otherwise I will welcome anything free in my wallet.  ;D

you use words such as "profitable" and "unsafe",... which don't make any sense here because this has nothing to do with security. your coins are not at risk and it doesn't make a difference if you are using a hot wallet or a cold wallet or a hardware wallet. you will be affected the same way.

they are just sending you money and if you spend it by mixing it with multiple other transaction outputs from your other addresses, that links them together so the only way this can be an "attack" is if they are trying to do blockchain analysis and that makes it an attack against privacy not security. and there is no profit in it! unless it is a a blockchain analysis company getting paid by government to do this.

it is indeed very dangerous and must be watched out, and we need to provide security in saving our assets to bitcoin to be safer, and I will learn it.

when BTC  price will rise, this type of attack will be faced by many users
so spreading awareness will keep users away from such attacks

if the target they want is supposed to target the big holders, but I've seen in some cases that also get small amounts of bitcoin, whether they want to share bitcoin like that, I learn a little from that link at least I catch it it will be safe as long as we never publish the address of our main wallet and use it for anything, especially biodata our profile

Privacy in Bitcoin does not mean that your currencies cannot be tracked. "There is some research talking about the possibility of this happening without the need of this attacks," but your identity and addresses can only be linked after using central platforms.
Your use of centralized platforms means you do not care about privacy much.

I do not know the benefit of this attack but can connect the identity in ways that are less expensive than these.

I have several BTC wallet and all of it is empty. I hope they'll send it to me :)

I don't understand these people. I am sure that if they work like this attack all time, they would have find a way make money a lot...

Hackers don’t need to ask about your private keys,instead they will find it their ways

They have all the abilities in this field to get our funds,thats why this topic was posted to help others to prevent being a victim

As much thate made more secure ways of saving the currencies,and spreading our coins into many wallets and hardwares

I don’t really understand how you people are saying one’s identity can be out in the public, till you don’t share your personal details no one can find out who’s doing the transactions. Also I feel the only people who really need to be worried are the ones who have given KYC to an exchange, in that case they may get your information. As these hacks keep on rising I feel we all should stop clicking on suspicious links, and use 2fa for greater security.

secondbtc, I think what is written in this article makes little sense, or to say that it was written without much research. Those 546 satoshi transactions which have been the subject of various discussions lately are not really any mystery. These transactions come from one address 1ViViGLEawN27xRzGrEhhYPQrZiTKvKLo (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1ViViGLEawN27xRzGrEhhYPQrZiTKvKLo), and this address is connected with https://vivigle.com/ which is A global crypto Ratings and Analytics Platform.

Maybe some do not like it, but there is no law to defend someone from making such transactions. I can say that using of custom address and sending small amounts of coins is a kind of advertising, but for now it is not so successful. Reason for that is that many ask, and just a few find the answer which is actually publicly available, if you just use search engine.

Well, it seems hacking peoples bitcoin is not easy as you imagine, especially the one who have large amount of bitcoins.
If this was easy, then the hacker just need to deliver the dusting attack to the exchange wallet, that have very very big amount of transactions.
But still, we better change our wallet address if something wrong happening in our wallet.

I happened to receive a bit of BTC from Vivigle about two weeks ago and I don't believe most dust transactions are part of any sort of nefarious attack but rather perhaps part of blockchain analysis. These transactions are at the least going to make your fees a little bit higher and just a small nuisance. If you're worried about being tracked and/or serious about anonymity, having multiple addresses and a mixer is a must and should keep you anonymous if done right. Either way, coins aren't going to directly be emptied out of your wallet with this sort of "attack", doesn't seem too bad to me.

Hmm, thanks for your info
I check on my wallet then I got nothing ;D, It seems I'm safe. Anyway, I don't need to worry because I don't have a lot of Bitcoin on my wallet. I'm sure this scammer was not interested with my wallet because on my wallet only have a Bitcoin worth less than $50...  ;D

I also don't know how would they be doing it at the first read of this article, but then I stumble upon this on this same post. Credits to @cissrawk:


Good thing that my spending habits aren't that much grand, or my addresses aren't that much exposed. A same dust attack happened in 2015 and 2016, though their intentions are to clog the blockchain and not necessarily steal information like the recent dusting attacks we know.

Some scammers might not attack your wallet directly. Even if you only own $50 bitcoin but you've got another asset stored in your wallet or exchanges, they might use this attack to deanonymize you and get their hands to discover which exchange you largely (or people) used. After that, they'll start phishing, etc. At least that's how I understand it, even it might sound tiresome and timewasting for some people.

calling this process an "attack" is going too far and the article that OP is advertising here is purely bullshit clickbait. and the worst part is that it is misleading people (specially newcomers) into thinking their coins are in danger if they receive such transactions as you can see from a couple of comments here.
@Lucius already gave a good explanation, this simply is an attempt for tracking users and i don't think it is effective at all since the method is known now and people who don't want to be tracked aren't going to be.

i think you need to visit this thread also and share your experience

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/aoqibz/i_just_received_000000546_btc_where_did_it_come/

In order to figure out what people own, do, spend, the spammers don't need this spam attack to accomplish that. The average users are champion in exposing themselves already, so it would be an utter waste of time and money sending them dust and wait for them to spend that specific UTXO.

In most cases I can tell you right now which addresses are connected to a specific exchange or service (expecially when it concerns the most popular ones), so from there it makes these spam attacks look even more silly. It's just hyped up badly by news outlets. It's what they are designed to do in order to generate a few clicks left and right. ::)

I guess this kind of attack will targeting your personal identity, this won't work for common peoples.
Let say they managed to know who are you by your wallet movements, unless you want to stay anonymous, you won't get a problem.

This has happened to me many times before and I was confused at first just like you are.
Not saying its something to not be concerned about but I wouldnt worry too much.
Often I have found ERC-20 tokens in my wallet as well and thought the same thing.
Sometimes random air drops occur that you forget you signed up for or people send to the wrong address.