According to Binance, there was a “large-scale dusting attack” on Litecoin (LTC) users on August 9:
Approximately 5 hours ago there was a large-scale dusting attack on $LTC @Litecoin users.
One of many transactions: https://t.co/zgk9gPRNcU
Here's what you need to know and how to protect yourself:https://t.co/KNVoQLwBUb
— Binance (@binance) August 10, 2019
Here is how Binance Academy defines a dusting attack:
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. 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.
Binance Academy’s James Jager, the person who first identified the dusting attack on Litecoin users, told Cointelegraph on August 15:
It was network-wide, which meant it affected all users of Litecoin that had an active Litecoin address at the time. The address of the person responsible for the dusting attack can be found here: https://blockchair.com/litecoin/address/LeEMCDHmvDb2MjhVHGphYmoGeGFvdTuk2K
We became aware of the dusting attack on Saturday morning when one of our Binance Angels had received a small amount of LTC into their Litecoin wallet.
Another report by Cointelegraph on this subject says that Jager went on to say:
The person behind the dusting attack owns a mining pool based out of Russia, EMCD[dot]io. 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.
On the same day, having studied this attack, blockchain analytics firm Glassnode said that its analysis suggested that 294,582 LTC addresses had been affected, and there had also been a “similar large–scale attack” back in April:
The recent $LTC dusting attack on @binance affected 294,582 addresses. During our analysis, we also uncovered a similar large–scale attack in April. pic.twitter.com/T0lMBN6VPG
— glassnode (@glassnode) August 15, 2019
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