Dusting attacks

A dusting attack begins when an attacker sends “dust” funds (a tiny amount of crypto) to multiple wallets via an airdrop. If the recipient tries to cash out or move these funds, the attacker will use the activity to try to discover the wallet owner’s identity, which can then be used for phishing scams or other types of attacks. 

Sometimes these tokens will have a URL in the name to try to get the recipient to visit the website for malicious purposes, such as to reveal their seed phrase.

If you receive unexpected dust funds from an airdrop, you can simply leave them alone, in which case the attacker can’t perform the required analysis to try to de-anonymize the address. You can also report the token from your Coinbase Wallet app by selecting the three dots at the top of the asset screen and then selecting Hide & report