Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex, said that the cryptocurrency exchange has prevented an exploit attempt related to an XRP transfer worth approximately $15 billion.
On his X (Twitter) page, Ardoino wrote that this attack attempt failed thanks to the exchange's advanced security measures.
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The incident caught the attention of the entire crypto community because it involved the transfer of 25,601,477,777 XRP, which is just under 50% of the current amount of Ripple in circulation (54 billion).
Transfers of large sums are closely watched by investors and traders, as they are most often made for selling purposes and can cause price fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market.
It is worth noting that this transaction was first reported by Whale Alert. According to CoinGape, blockchain tracking account Whale Alert deleted its X (Twitter) post after reporting the transfer of 25.6 billion XRP from an unknown wallet to Bitfinex, citing problems with accurately reading the Ripple node's response.
Bitfinex's CTO explained that the attempted attack on the exchange on January 14 was based on a "partial payment exploit," as the attacker believed the company had not accurately configured its payment processing software.
The attacker believed that the system was only reading the "amount" field of an XRP transaction, which is set to a larger value. The attacker, however, would send an amount much smaller than the amount specified in another field of the transaction and attempt to receive credit from the company for the difference.
Ardoino emphasized in his statement that the cryptocurrency exchange's security system is set up properly and handles the "delivered_amount" data field correctly. In addition, the blockchain data showed that the attacker also launched a similar attack on Binance involving the transfer of 58.9 billion XRP, which was also unsuccessful.
Bitfinex is one of the oldest crypto exchanges, founded in 2012 in Hong Kong. The exchange has a convenient and functional trading platform with the ability to create customized orders. There are several passive income opportunities for interested investors.
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