Bitfinex CTO Labels 25B XRP Transfer News as Hack Attempt

Bitfinex CTO has revealed that the crypto exchange was recently targeted in a “partial payments exploit” attempt.

by Brian Danga. Fact checked by: Ciaran Lawler, Editor: Stefan Trapp

Published: January 15, 2024 │ 8:40 AM GMT

Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino holding XRP coins in the bushes. — *Created by Kornelija Poderskytė from DailyCoin*

Paolo Ardoino has revealed a recent hack attempt on Bitfinex.
The hacker attempted a “partial payments exploit” using XRP.
Ardoino reiterated that the Bitfinex platform “properly handles” partial payments data.

Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino has responded to a recent incident involving a single wallet attempting to transfer about half of XRP’s total supply to the Bitfinex crypto exchange.

On January 14, blockchain tracker and analytics system Whale Alert shared an update on Twitter (X), claiming to have noticed a transaction of 25.6 billion XRP ($15 billion) from an unknown wallet to Bitfinex.

Paolo Ardoino Clears the Air

Following the claims by Whale Alert, Ardoino took to his official Twitter account and explained that the transaction was an attempted exploit on Bitfinex.

Sponsored

“Someone attempted to attack @bitfinex via "Partial Payments Exploit. Attack failed since Bitfinex properly handles 'delivered_amount' data field,” Ardoino wrote.

A partial payment exploit occurs when an attacker sends a payment that delivers less than what the “amount field” indicates, assuming that the target company has an improperly configured system that will only read the highlighted amount of the XRP transaction.

By sending an amount much smaller than specified in another transaction field, the attacker aims to earn credit from the targeted company for the difference. But as Ardoino noted, the attack failed on Bitfinex because the exchange’s system reads the “delivered amount” data field.

After Ardoino’s post, the Whale Alert team deleted the 25.6 billion XRP transfer post. It issued another update, claiming, “There was an issue with properly reading the #Ripple node response, resulting in a few wrong posts.”