Developers have patched a critical vulnerability in the XRP Ledger that existed since 2015. The flaw, discovered by Veria Labs using an AI agent, allowed for the unauthorized minting of XRP tokens by exploiting an integer overflow in the payment mechanism.
The attack could have potentially generated 18 trillion XRP, significantly exceeding the total supply of 100 billion tokens. RippleX confirmed the exploit on a local server but found no evidence of it being used in public networks. Veria Labs received a maximum bounty of $250,000 for the discovery.
To mitigate the risk, the team bypassed the standard two-week amendment process for the first time in over a decade. Version xrpld 3.4.1 was released on September 25, and over 80% of validators updated their nodes immediately to prevent potential exploitation.
The update also addressed a separate issue in the Batch function, which could have caused inconsistencies in blockchain explorers and node synchronization. This secondary fix followed the standard voting procedure and took effect on October 9.
Following the incident, the XRPL team announced plans to implement mandatory re-testing of vulnerability patches before releases. RippleX also intends to expand the use of AI-driven bug hunting and formal code verification.
