decrypt.coarticleXRP Ledger’s Payment Engine Had a Counterfeiting Bug Hiding Since 2015
XRP Ledger maintainers disclosed a critical integer overflow in the payment engine, reported via bug bounty in September. A payment consuming hundreds of crafted order-book offers made the buyer's owed sum wrap around to a tiny value while sellers were paid in full, minting XRP. The built-in "no XRP created" invariant check used the same flawed arithmetic and missed it. The fix shipped in 3.4.1 on Sept. 25, bypassing the usual amendment vote and two-week wait for the first time, so the open-source patch would not expose a live exploit. No exploitation evidence was found.
TL;DR XRPL payment-engine integer overflow (since 2015) could mint counterfeit XRP; the invariant check shared the flaw; patched in 3.4.1 outside the amendment process.
Organisations named here
- amendment process bypass
- RippleX
- XRPL bug bounty
Technologies named here
- XRPL bug bounty program
- XRP Ledger amendment process
- XRP Ledger network validators
- XRP Ledger
Techniques named here
- Flawed safety check
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