XRP Ledger Patches Critical Bug That Could Have Minted Trillions of XRP

Developers behind the XRP Ledger (BITSTAMP:XRPUSD) patched a decade-old vulnerability in the payment engine that could have permitted attackers to mint trillions of new tokens. Security firm Veria Labs discovered the flaw using an artificial intelligence agent and built a working exploit, earning a $250,000 bug bounty from Ripple. The issue, present in the codebase since 2015, had not been exploited on any public network.

The flaw stemmed from a lack of overflow checks when processing complex payment totals across multiple order book offers, allowing an attacker to wrap balance numbers around to artificially mint tokens. In a single transaction, an exploit could have generated up to 18 trillion XRP, dwarfing the total capped supply of 100 billion tokens. To prevent malicious actors from identifying and exploiting the open-source flaw, developers bypassed the network's standard two-week validator amendment process and rolled out binaries immediately.

Moving forward, network engineers plan to expand AI-assisted security testing and formal verification to catch complex vulnerabilities earlier. Investors should watch how validator adoption and future code updates balance rapid security deployments with decentralization and open-source transparency. XRP traded at $1.414, rising 0.93%.