The recent record-breaking network activity on Ethereum could possibly be linked to a wave of address poisoning attacks which have taken advantage of low gas fees since December, said security researcher Andrey Sergeenkov.
Cointelegraph reported on Friday that network activity storage nearly doubled to eight million addresses in a month, while day by day transactions hit an all-time high of nearly 2.9 million.
In the week starting Jan. 12, there have been 2.7 million latest addresses, 170% greater than usual, while day by day transactions rose to over 2.5 million, Sergeenkov said.
However, Sergeenkov said the rise could possibly be as a result of a variety of mass spam attack often called “address poisoning,” which has grow to be more economical after the Fusaka Ethereum network upgrade in December lowered transaction fees.
In the weeks following the early December upgrade, network fees fell by greater than 60%.
“Address poisoning has grow to be disproportionately attractive to attackers,” the researcher said, adding: “You can’t scale infrastructure without first addressing user security!”
$740,000 loss as a result of address poisoning attacks
With address poisoning, fraudsters send small transactions from wallet addresses that resemble legitimate addresses, tricking users into copying the unsuitable address when making a transaction.
The scammers first send small amounts of cash, often stablecoins, to “dust spreader” addresses.
Sergeenkov said he was in a position to uncover likely dust spreader addresses by taking a look at the variety of wallets that received lower than a dollar of their first stablecoin transaction.
To discover which of those addresses were “dust spreaders,” he then examined only people who sent transactions to greater than 10,000 addresses.
“These poison addresses then spread dust to hundreds of thousands of potential victims and result in false entries in transaction histories.”
Some of the biggest “dust distributors” sent the shipments to greater than 400,000 recipients, and thus far greater than $740,000 has been stolen from 116 victims this fashion, he said.
Top contract addresses spread dust to bait addresses. Source: Andrey SergeenkovCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph's editorial guidelines and goals to supply accurate and up-to-date information. Readers are advised to independently confirm the data. Read our editorial policies https://cointelegraph.com/editorial-policy
