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The Crypto market space is evolving and in its transformation, there are rising concerns of security when it comes to your investment. While many platforms are working on security concerns, we are still getting to hear about hacks and system infiltration. It is then important to design a network infrastructure that has security embedded in its individual layers.
We trust different wallet creators to keep our investments safe and secure and the teams from these organizations are constantly working to upgrade their profferings. One such Hardware wallet maker company is Ledger that has recently announced how it has upgraded its software suite to include more norms of privacy and control over crypto transfers to prevent any form of what we call ‘dusting attack’. A dusting attack happens when a malicious entity sends a small amount of Bitcoin to a wallet in order to dismantle the privacy of users for future attacks.
The Ledger Live version 2.11.1 has a new feature called Coin Control which enables the users to manage and modify transaction settings to include more privacy or optimal fee usage. The feature also works well through its potential to administer Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallets or multiple different Bitcoin addresses. Users can select addresses that they might want to use for their transactions using Coin Control rather than the initial default FIFO method of using the oldest addresses.
This is extremely useful in the case when the rogue parties track the transactions with the bitcoin they send called dust. This dust traces the identity of the owner because of the accumulation of small unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). One major dusting attack that took place last year was with Litecoin users. It was the giant Cryptocurrency exchange which claimed that a dusting attack happened against Litecoin in a Twitter feed.
Ledger believes that with the help of Coin Control, users essentially have the choice to forgo the use of the tiny UTXO. He further added:
“As such, they cannot track any movements. In short: it can be a game-changer when it comes to your privacy.”
Apart from the above-promised feature, other features on the new software upgrade also include a fair optimization of a network fee structure which will allow users to choose UTXO’s with a higher value. This will eventually reduce the byte size of the transaction. Capabilities are upped because the new feature also will select specific addresses for transfers if there is a need to keep the payments separate from each other.
Reddit was inundated with users applauding the new upgrade. They believe that with such measures dust attacks will become a worthless deal. One user wrote:
Having the ability not to include small inputs when fees are high is great. I’ve been waiting for this feature. Thumbs up!”
There were others who also were looking out for more functionalities like appending on TOR, open-source software that helps keep communication clandestine. Some users also requested the addition of personal nodes as they have trust issues with Ledger, a centralized wallet company.