The flickering screen of Anya's laptop cast a pale glow on her face as she reviewed her Bitcoin transactions. She'd just sold a portion of her holdings, a tidy sum of 0.1 BTC, and was preparing to transfer it to her cold storage wallet. "Finally," she sighed, the day's profits feeling substantial after the recent market dip.
She scrolled through her transaction history, searching for the correct address to copy. Her eyes landed on a familiar string of alphanumeric characters, a transaction from a few days prior. "That's it," she muttered, highlighting the address and pasting it into the send field. She double-checked the first and last few characters – "1A7...Q9Z" – and hit send.
Anya leaned back, a sense of satisfaction washing over her. She'd been careful, meticulous. She'd even double-checked the address, just like the crypto gurus always advised.
A week later, Anya went to check her cold storage balance. Her heart plummeted. The 0.1 BTC was gone. Panic surged through her. She frantically checked the transaction history, her eyes widening in horror. The address she'd sent to was subtly different – "1A7...R9Z." A single letter, a tiny deviation, but enough to send her hard-earned Bitcoin into the abyss.
She remembered the small, seemingly insignificant transaction from a few days prior, the one she'd copied the address from. It was a "dusting attack," she realized, a malicious attempt to poison her address book. The attacker had sent her a tiny amount of Bitcoin, using a vanity address meticulously crafted to resemble her own.
Anya felt a wave of nausea. The 0.1 BTC, a significant sum, was gone. She had been tricked, a victim of the insidious address poisoning attack. The lesson was stark and painful: even double-checking wasn't enough. In the world of cryptocurrency, vigilance was paramount, and even the smallest oversight could have devastating consequences. Anya vowed to be even more careful in the future, a hard-learned lesson etched into her digital consciousness.
quotingMy latest research that I presented yesterday at the MIT Bitcoin Expo, delves into a relatively new type of attack we're seeing on the blockchain.
nevent1q…n0j7
https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-address-poisoning-attacks/