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A Tornado Cash dusting attack is targeting celebrity wallets following the Tornado Cash sanctions in the US.
Seemingly a message to the authorities in response to the sanctions, the attack is attempting to demonstrate issues with sanctioning wallets that use Tornado Cash.
Here's what happened.
Tornado Cash dusting attack
As spotted by former Ethereum Core developer Joseph Delong, a mysterious Ethereum wallet has started a dusting attack of sending 0.1 ETH to doxxed celebrity crypto wallets via Tornado Cash.
The celebrities targeted in the Tornado Cash attack include Justin Sun, Jimmy Fallon, Shaquille O'Neil, Logan Paul, Randi Zuckerberg, Beeple, BitBoy, Dave Chappelle, and former footballer Kolo Toure. It also sent ETH to wallets owned by many major crypto exchanges, including Binance, Gate.io, and Kraken.
While this may seem like a fairly harmless, and even generous dusting attack compared to many others in the crypto space, there is a message behind this.
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"If everyone is guilty, then no one is"
After the Tornado Cash sanction noted that those in the US could face punishment for using the cryptocurrency mixer, this address is attempting to test the meaning of this by sending Ethereum to major individuals using the service.
The attack is attempting to make a statement about how the authorities would have to conduct investigations into these attacks, which have received funds via the sanctioned mixer.
As explained by one user on Reddit, the attack creates a situation of "if everyone is guilty then no one is".
"Good luck proving someone actually intended to receive the ETH from Tornado Cash," the post continued, noting that it could force authorities to either impose sanctions on all wallets, or none.
Elsewhere, other users joked that they wished had been targeted by the wallet.
Of course, in reality, the authorities can, and very well may just ignore these Tornado Cash transactions. With the US Treasury deeming Tornado Cash as a hotbed for money laundering hacked cryptocurrency, it will have larger whales to go after.