Bitfinex Successfully Resolves $1.5 Billion XRP Transfer Attack, Binance Also Escapes
Bitfinex and Binance, two major cryptocurrency exchanges, have successfully thwarted an attack attempting to exploit a partial payment vulnerability in Ripple (XRP). The attack aimed to involve billions of dollars’ worth of XRP.
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Huge Transfer Serves as a Distraction: Attackers Attempt to Exploit Partial Payment Vulnerability
Whale Alert Mistaken Alert
Operation of the Partial Payment Vulnerability
Successful Defense by Bitfinex and Binance
According to Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Bitfinex, an attacker attempted to exploit the partial payment feature of XRP to attack their cryptocurrency exchange, but ultimately failed. Initially, Whale Alert, a blockchain tracking account, detected a transfer of nearly $15 billion worth of XRP from an unknown wallet to Bitfinex. However, this transaction never actually occurred; it was an attempt by the attacker to exploit the “partial payment vulnerability.”
Whale Alert, upon realizing the issue, deleted its previous tweet and stated that there were some incorrect publications due to issues with correctly reading Ripple nodes.
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The principle of the partial payment vulnerability assumes that a company’s system is improperly configured to only read the “amount” field in XRP transactions, which is set to a high value. In reality, the amount sent by the attacker is much smaller than the amount specified in another transaction field, with the aim of obtaining credit for the difference from the company.
Fortunately, Ardoino pointed out that the attack failed because “Bitfinex correctly processed the ‘delivered_amount’ data field.” According to blockchain data, the attacker also attempted a similar attack on Binance, trying to transfer 58.9 billion XRP, but also failed.
This incident once again highlights the importance for cryptocurrency exchanges to remain vigilant and continuously strengthen their security defenses in the face of increasingly cunning cyber attacks.
Bitfinex
Paolo Ardoino
XRP
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