The bug, believed to date to 2015, was found by researcher Cayden Liao and Veria AI and internally reported on Sept. 22. Engineers at RippleX, Ripple’s developer arm, reproduced the attack on a standalone server and confirmed the newly created XRP could be spent in a later transaction
RippleX said it found no evidence the flaw was exploited on any public network
All 100 billion XRP were created when the ledger launched in 2012, and its software is built so no more can ever be added. But the security vulnerability could have allowed an attacker to create XRP from nothing and sell it on exchanges, undercutting a supply cap that institutions using the network rely on
The attack worked through the ledger’s built-in exchange, where accounts post offers to swap one token for another
An attacker could have, theoretically, open hundreds of accounts, have each one offer a tiny amount of a token in exchange for an unusually large amount of XRP, then send a single payment that bought every offer at once
The total XRP owed would be too large for the software to count correctly, so the attacker’s selling accounts would be paid in full while the buying account was charged almost nothing — leaving the attacker with XRP that hadn’t existed before
The XRP Ledger runs a check after every transaction to make sure no new XRP has appeared, but that would have relied on the miscounted total and missed it. A separate limit on how much XRP a single account can receive wouldn’t have triggered either, because the attack spread the XRP across hundreds of accounts
The researchers’ method needed only a few hundred XRP to open those accounts, most of which could be recovered, plus transaction fees
Developers shipped the fix in xrpld 3.4.1, the ledger’s server software, on Sept. 25 without disclosing what it repaired
The incident joins a run of long-hidden crypto security flaws surfaced with AI help since July, including the Coldcard wallet bug behind the theft of at least 1,367 BTC and the vulnerabilities that forced Core Lightning to tell bitcoin node operators to disconnect
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