$15 Billion XRP Transfer Behind Failed Exploit Attempt

Crypto News – According to Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of Bitfinex, a failed attempt at a partial payments exploit involved a purported transfer of around $15 billion worth of XRP from an unidentified wallet to Bitfinex on January 14. The transaction never materialized.

$15 Billion XRP Transfer Behind Failed Exploit Attempt

The move was first brought to light by the blockchain tracking X account Whale Alert, which said it observed a 25.6 billion XRP transaction going from an unidentified wallet to Bitfinex. Whale Alert reported there was a problem and later removed the message.

Then, according to Ardoino on X, Bitfinex was the target of an attempted attack using a “Partial Payments Exploit,” with the would-be attacker believing the exchange had misconfigured its software to handle partial payments.

How did the Attacker Fail?

The way a partial payment attack operates is by assuming that a business has a system that is incorrectly set up and only reads an XRP transaction’s amount field, which is set to a large value. Actually, the hacker sends a substantially smaller amount that is shown in a different transaction field with the intention of getting credit for the difference. However, according to Ardoino, Bitfinex correctly manages the delivered_amount data field, which is why the attack was unsuccessful.