Ethereum activity surge could be linked to dusting attacks: Researcher

Recent record network activity on Ethereum could be linked to a wave of address poisoning attacks that are taking advantage of low gas fees since December, said security researcher Andrey Sergeenkov.

Cointelegraph reported on Friday that network activity retention nearly doubled to 8 million addresses in a month, while daily transactions hit an all-time high of almost 2.9 million.

The week starting Jan. 12 saw 2.7 million new addresses, 170% higher than typical values, while daily transactions surged to over 2.5 million, said Sergeenkov.

However, Sergeenkov said the uptick could be due to a type of mass spam attack known as “address poisoning,” which has become more economical after the December Fusaka Ethereum network upgrade cut transaction fees.

Network fees fell more than 60% in the weeks that followed the upgrade in early December.

“Address poisoning has become disproportionately attractive for attackers,” said the researcher, adding: “you can’t scale infrastructure without addressing user security first!”

$740,000 lost in address poisoning attacks

Address poisoning involves scammers sending small transactions from wallet addresses that resemble legitimate ones, duping users into copying the wrong address when making a transaction.

The scammers first send small amounts of money, usually stablecoins, to “dust distributor” addresses.

Sergeenkov said he was able to uncover likely dust distributor addresses by looking at the number of wallets that received less than a dollar as their first stablecoin transaction.

Related: Efforts to bulletproof Ethereum are paying off in user metrics

Then, to identify which of these are “dust distributor” addresses, he looked at only those that sent transactions out to more than 10,000 addresses.

“These poisoning addresses then distribute dust to millions of potential victims, creating false entries in transaction histories.”

Some of the top “dust distributors” sent to more than 400,000 recipients, and so far, more than $740,000 has been stolen this way from 116 victims, he said.

Top contract addresses distributing dust to bait addresses. Source: Andrey Sergeenkov

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