XRP Ledger Patches Decade-Old Bug That Could Have Created Billions in XRP

XRP Ledger bug — The XRP Ledger has been patched for a critical vulnerability, dating back to 2015, that could have allowed attackers to create billions of dollars worth of new XRP tokens from nothing, violating the network’s fixed supply.

Researchers demonstrated that the bug could enable a payment to generate spendable XRP without the sender actually funding the transaction. The flaw was rooted in a counting error within the ledger’s built-in decentralized exchange, which could have allowed hundreds of accounts to receive large, illegitimate amounts of the cryptocurrency.

The discovery prompted an emergency software release to fix the vulnerability. The patch ensures the integrity of XRP’s capped supply of 100 billion tokens, a fundamental feature of the network.

This incident highlights the ongoing security challenges in maintaining blockchain protocols, even those with long-established histories like the XRP Ledger.