XRP Ledger Fixes 2015 Flaw That Could Have Minted XRP Out of Thin Air

A security report released Friday revealed a serious flaw in the XRP Ledger’s payment system that could have let an attacker generate large amounts of new XRP at no cost. The bug is believed to date back to 2015 and threatened the 100 billion token cap set when the network launched in 2012. Coindesk said,Researcher Cayden Liao and Veria AI found it and reported it internally on Sept. 22. RippleX engineers reproduced the attack on a standalone server and confirmed the created XRP was spendable.

How the XRP Exploit Would Have Worked

The attack targeted the built-in exchange. An attacker could open hundreds of accounts, each offering a tiny token amount for an unusually large XRP amount, then fire one payment that took every offer at once. The total owed was too big for the software to count properly, so sellers got paid in full while the buyer was charged almost nothing. The ledger’s post-transaction supply check relied on that wrong total, and the per account receiving limit never triggered because the XRP was spread across many accounts. The method needed only a few hundred XRP to set up, most of it recoverable.

Emergency Patch and Wider AI-Found Crypto Bugs

Developers released the fix in xrpld 3.4.1 on Sept. 25 without explaining what it repaired. The case follows other long hidden flaws uncovered with AI help since July, including the Coldcard wallet bug tied to at least 1,367 BTC stolen, and the issues that forced Core Lightning to tell node operators to disconnect.