XRP Ledger developers have patched a critical software flaw that could theoretically have allowed an attacker to create counterfeit XRP in a single transaction. According to Decrypt, the vulnerability was reported through the network’s bug bounty program in September and had remained in the payment engine since 2015.
How the flaw could have created XRP
The vulnerability involved an integer overflow in the payment engine, the part of the XRP Ledger software that processes payments involving offers in its order book. An integer overflow occurs when a calculation exceeds the largest value the system can store. Instead of retaining the full amount, the value can wrap around to a much smaller figure.
In this case, a specially constructed payment using hundreds of offers could have caused the total amount owed by a buyer to exceed the system’s maximum value. The payment engine would still have paid each seller in full, while charging the buyer almost nothing. The gap between those amounts would effectively have represented XRP that had not been legitimately issued.
The ledger’s safeguard against creating new XRP did not stop the transaction. That check relied on the same arithmetic and would have produced the same wrapped result, allowing the invalid transaction to pass undetected. Developers said an attacker could then have moved, traded or sent the improperly created XRP to exchanges.
Patch issued outside the normal process
RippleX engineers confirmed that the defect had existed since the current payment engine was written in 2015. It was not triggered by ordinary payments, which explains why the issue remained unnoticed for about a decade.
The maintainers said there is no evidence the vulnerability was exploited. A fix was released in version 3.4.1 on September 25, and more than 80% of the network’s trusted validators were running the patched software on that day.
The severity of the flaw led developers to bypass the XRP Ledger’s usual amendment procedure. Normally, validators vote on a transaction-processing change and wait two weeks before it becomes effective. The maintainers said this was the first deliberate use of an alternative release route for such a change since the system was introduced more than a decade ago.
They argued that publishing an open-source fix through the standard process could have exposed the vulnerability while leaving the network open to attack during the voting period.
XRP market picture
The disclosure comes as XRP has weakened. The source report said the token traded at $1.38 on Monday, down 1.6% over 24 hours and 9.4% over seven days, making it the worst performer among major cryptocurrencies in that comparison.
Moneyiar data at 09:59 on October 13, 2026, showed XRP at $1.3602552725, down 3.15% over 24 hours and 9.5% over seven days. The report also recalled a separate counterfeiting scare involving Zcash earlier this year, when a vulnerability that could have enabled forged coins was patched through an upgrade.
