How potential $94B XRP hack was stopped: ‘This was a serious vulnerability’

Ripple has confirmed that it patched a decade-old bug that could let anyone print infinite XRP tokens. 

The vulnerability could allow one to mint 18 trillion XRP with a single transaction, nearly 184x the current total supply, according to Cayden Liao of Veria Labs. 

Liao leads the AI firm that found the XRP bug, adding that it could have been the biggest crypto hack ever if left unmitigated. XRP’s market cap was about $94B at the time the bug was found in late September. 

This puts the full $94B at risk, more than 60 times the largest crypto hack on record (Bybit, $1.5B).

Veria reported the bug on the 22nd of September. The fix shipped on the 25th, with public disclosure following on the 9th of October.

Developers bypassed the usual amendment vote for an emergency upgrade, coordinating with validators to limit the exploitation window.

Ripple’s XRP bug: Is AI bad or good for crypto?

But the most interesting part of the story is that the XRP bug has been around since 2015-2017, according to Veria Labs. Its AI agent connected two flaws and built a working exploit on a local network.

Reacting to the same, Ayo Akinyele, head of engineering at RippleX, said, 

This was a serious vulnerability. AI is fundamentally changing how quickly vulnerabilities can be discovered.