XRP bridge drained for $200,000 after software mistook fake deposit for real one

[Oshosondy]

Is it because crypto is worldwide? Exploits are too many. It is almost everyday that we are reading about crypto exploits. Among them DeFi and Bridges are very common more than other ones but which are also common.

This one is about an hacker that created unbacked XRP on another blockchain, then exchanged it for real XRP held in reserve. It has been too late before it is noticed.

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/12/xrp-bridge-drained-for-usd200-000-after-software-mistook-fake-deposits-for-real-ones

[JeromeTash]

Most of the recent attacks have AI written all over them, and the bad thing is that some developers of some projects have been too lazy. All they do is copy paste code or smart contract codes and do not carry out proper auditing. The attacks are obviously bound to happen on multiple platforms.

We are in the rough times of exploits and hacks.

[Odusko]

Is it because crypto is worldwide? Exploits are too many. It is almost everyday that we are reading about crypto exploits. Among them DeFi and Bridges are very common more than other ones but which are also common.

This one is about an hacker that created unbacked XRP on another blockchain, then exchanged it for real XRP held in reserve. It has been too late before it is noticed.

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/12/xrp-bridge-drained-for-usd200-000-after-software-mistook-fake-deposits-for-real-ones

With the adventure of AI we should see increase in such expploatations and hacks incidents, any ways we should now see how project spend a good amount of money in developing a strong resistance tools against such possible exploit in the future, $200,000 is stolen well this is a small amount of money but then there is need to spend more money to protect the XRP bring and other Defi chain that suffered recent incidents of hack and exploitation of this nature.

[TastyChillySauce00]

Is it because crypto is worldwide? Exploits are too many. It is almost everyday that we are reading about crypto exploits. Among them DeFi and Bridges are very common more than other ones but which are also common.

Exploit has risen with how AI has evolved, the US AI labs are putting guardrail behind the LLM model so any cybersecurity research related activity requires KYC or the company approval, the open source model didn't and there are abliterated version of the open source model that removes whatever guardrail built into the model.

Not saying open source model is bad, but Defis and bridges need to invest more into bug bounty and security, otherwise they will keep facing the same problem over and over again.

[pooya87]

The increased rate of hacks and exploits being abused is because of introduction of AI services that made things easier for the hackers to find and exploit these flaws. But lets not forget that these flaws existed in these shitcoins, AI just made it easier to find them for the lazy hackers. And that's the important lesson to learn here, majority of altcoins and these smart contracts (DeFi, bridges, etc) are insecure and most of the times it is because their protocols are severely flawed.

This is why even after 16 years, altcoins are still mainly serving one purpose and that is to be pumped and dumped.

[hugeblack]

In fact, all these bridges are copy-and-paste ideas with a small number of developers, and therefore many parts of the code are not reviewed, and some of them are not even reviewed when a similar hack occurs. Therefore, you may find that the same vulnerability exists in dozens of bridges, and they do not take it seriously to update them.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

Probably, this was why XRP dumped to $0.9905 yesterday, had it been XRP has the mechanism where by the team can freeze withdrawal of the coins in a specific wallet just like some altcoins that has such protocol, it would have just been easy to freeze the coins in the address the hacker have sent those coins to. In as much as I don't like that kind of mechanism because of its disadvantage, it can also be helpful in situations like this. I think the best possibility of getting this coins back is if they contact the exchang or centralized custody platform that the hacker is going to send the coins to for them to cash out, then the account can be frozen like that.

[asriloni]

We have seen plenties of defi hacked by used the same method to deposite the fake token used to be a collateral to withdraw the real token. It's sad most of developers still don't even care with it, yet they still think their code has no bug. lol.

However, there must be an awareness about the regular audit especially for the onchain platform. We're in difficult time of hacking, but it will get even worse from day to the day.

North Korean hacker is to build more and more AI for the criminal purpose. So we may see the increase of hacking case in the future unless the developers will increase their awareness about how important regular security audit.

Honestly, the ai tech is also good, but it's also having bad sites too.

[LogitechMouse]

Is it because crypto is worldwide? Exploits are too many. It is almost everyday that we are reading about crypto exploits. Among them DeFi and Bridges are very common more than other ones but which are also common.

This one is about an hacker that created unbacked XRP on another blockchain, then exchanged it for real XRP held in reserve. It has been too late before it is noticed.
---

I did a quick search, and there's a possibility that the hackers aren't focusing that much on the code anymore, but they're focusing more than the people behind the project. How? They lure the employees to a phishing site, steal their private keys and drain everything that they could possibly get. One example of this one is the Step Finance.

There are 2 more which are that the cross-bridges right now are still weak when it comes to security, and the most notorious hackers - North Korean Hackers are involved in these exploits. Well, I guess we can conclude that the security is weak on these DeFi platform particularly on Bridges that's why exploits like these are happening. As I've said in the past, if you're a developer and you see that the platform is working, you will only know that there's a problem with the security of your project if there's a hack, an exploit or a breach that happens.

Well, let's not forget the involvement of AI on this one because... why not? I mean hackers are becoming better, and they'll use the possible tools that they could use in order to become more successful on what they're doing.

[shinratensei_]

This one is about an hacker that created unbacked XRP on another blockchain, then exchanged it for real XRP held in reserve. It has been too late before it is noticed.

Reading the article and how the hacker exploited the hack, this is a classic case where even the bridge logic itself is flawed, the bridge don't even bother to check destination address.

A transaction between two hacker's wallet back and forth with forged memo is enough to exploit the bridge and drain the reserve. Sometimes it makes me wonder if the people building the bridge is really competent people that care about security. They implemented 17-of-28 signature requirement only to allow flawed deposit validation easily causing the 17 signature requirement useless.

[justdimin]

We have seen plenties of defi hacked by used the same method to deposite the fake token used to be a collateral to withdraw the real token. It's sad most of developers still don't even care with it, yet they still think their code has no bug. lol.

However, there must be an awareness about the regular audit especially for the onchain platform. We're in difficult time of hacking, but it will get even worse from day to the day.

North Korean hacker is to build more and more AI for the criminal purpose. So we may see the increase of hacking case in the future unless the developers will increase their awareness about how important regular security audit.

Honestly, the ai tech is also good, but it's also having bad sites too.

I am pretty sure that projects are aware of the attacks that are going around, not like they learn it from us. They study it, they read about it, they must be following it. My job is not to follow crypto news everyday, it's theirs. So they knew that there were attacks, either from North Koreans or anyone else, to be fair- just attacks and hacks and honeypots and many more.

It means that XRP was aware of these things, and they did nothing to prevent the same thing from happening to them. This is what I mean when I say that centralised projects should be avoided, because XRP is owned by Ripple, a company with a CEO, so some dude being a stupid moron could cause you to lose this much money, as you can see. This is a small amount, but there is no guarantee that the next one will be equally small. If they did not care about it until now, XRP surely will try to take care of it afterwards, but I am not sure how much money they would spend to make sure nothing like this could happen again.

[asriloni]

We have seen plenties of defi hacked by used the same method to deposite the fake token used to be a collateral to withdraw the real token. It's sad most of developers still don't even care with it, yet they still think their code has no bug. lol.

However, there must be an awareness about the regular audit especially for the onchain platform. We're in difficult time of hacking, but it will get even worse from day to the day.

North Korean hacker is to build more and more AI for the criminal purpose. So we may see the increase of hacking case in the future unless the developers will increase their awareness about how important regular security audit.

Honestly, the ai tech is also good, but it's also having bad sites too.

I am pretty sure that projects are aware of the attacks that are going around, not like they learn it from us. They study it, they read about it, they must be following it. My job is not to follow crypto news everyday, it's theirs. So they knew that there were attacks, either from North Koreans or anyone else, to be fair- just attacks and hacks and honeypots and many more.

It means that XRP was aware of these things, and they did nothing to prevent the same thing from happening to them. This is what I mean when I say that centralised projects should be avoided, because XRP is owned by Ripple, a company with a CEO, so some dude being a stupid moron could cause you to lose this much money, as you can see. This is a small amount, but there is no guarantee that the next one will be equally small. If they did not care about it until now, XRP surely will try to take care of it afterwards, but I am not sure how much money they would spend to make sure nothing like this could happen again.

The concern was not XRP, but any developers who developed the 3rd defi like bridge, swap and etc. We're still seeing this kind of hack case happening. So it's most likely those 3rd party app developers are not even learning from what happend to the previous projects who got the similar hack in the past.

If they're still lacking of awareness about how fast the development in AI, their platforms can't be considered as safe.

AI agent posses a huge threat to the defi platform these days.