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Ripple (XRP) has remained unmoved after a recent attempt to transfer XRP tokens worth $15 billion to Bitfinex was thwarted.
If successful, the transfer would most likely have affected XRP price significantly seeing the amount being moved was a meaningful percentage of the overall XRP circulating supply.
How did Bitfinex thwart the XRP hack?
It all started when Whale Alert, a blockchain tracker and analytics system reporting large and interesting transactions as they happen, reported on its X account a staggering $15 billion worth of XRP transfer to Bitfinex. The revelation instantaneously sent shockwaves throughout the cryptocurrency community seeing that the massive transfer involved 25.6 billion XRP tokens, nearly half the circulating supply.
Although Whale Alert later corrected the information stating that “there was an issue with properly reading the Ripple node response, resulting in a few wrong posts,” Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex’s Chief Technology Officer, confirmed the incident, highlighting the exchange’s adept handling of the ‘delivered_amount’ data field.
After investigations, the attack was found to have been rooted in the XRP Ledger’s partial payments feature. It leveraged a vulnerability within the XRP Ledger network. The attacker aimed to manipulate the assumption that Bitfinex’s system only reads the “amount” field of an XRP transaction. By sending a significantly smaller amount specified in another transaction field, the exploit sought to deceive the exchange into crediting the difference.
Paolo Ardoino took to social media, confirming the attempt and reassuring the community that Bitfinex’s security measures successfully thwarted the attack. The exchange’s proper processing of the ‘delivered_amount’ data field played a pivotal role in neutralizing the exploit. Similar tactics were employed in an unsuccessful attack on another major exchange, Binance, involving a 58.9 billion XRP transfer.
Someone attempted to attack @bitfinex via "Partial Payments Exploit".
Attack failed since Bitfinex properly handles 'delivered_amount' data field.https://t.co/EiGw9UQmmq
(updated with better gif) https://t.co/8I7vlO05ou pic.twitter.com/DxOnJLLkhU— Paolo Ardoino 🍐 (@paoloardoino) January 14, 2024
XRP price remains firm
Despite the attempted attack, XRP continues to maintain its market position. With a current price of $0.5791, XRP price experienced very little downward pressure as a result of the scare. It largely remained bullish seeing that it was 0.51% over the last 24 hours.
The token has risen by 49.63% in the last year, solidifying the gains it has made post the landmark ruling against the SEC that XRP is not a security.
The post Ripple (XRP) unmoved as Bitfinex successfully thwarts $15B XRP attack appeared first on Invezz
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