Hacking News
Hidden XRP Bug Threatened Supply Cap for Decades
A critical bug in the XRP Ledger, the foundation blockchain for XRP tokens, was discovered by researcher Cayden Liao and Veria AI. The bug, which allowed for the creation of new XRP tokens out of thin air, threatened the total supply cap of 100 billion XRP created in 2012. The issue was identified in September 22 and reported internally. No damage was done, as RippleX shipped a fix. The bug, believed to have existed since 2015, was triggered by a massive scale of operations. The XRP Foundation noted that the bug went unnoticed mainly because it required hundreds of deliberately constructed operations and because the ledger's own safeguards missed it. The foundation plans to apply AI adversarial testing and strengthen its bug bounty program to prevent such vulnerabilities in the future.