Hidden Virus Threat on Ripple: It Could Have Resulted in Disaster if Not Discovered! Here Are the Details of the Major Threat

The Ripple ecosystem came into the spotlight after a hacker injected malicious code into the official node package manager XRP Ledger (XRPL); this move could allow attackers to seize users' private keys and drain their wallets.

Security firm Aikido stated that the fake package surfaced on Monday, April 21 at 20:53 and was uploaded under the name "mukulljangid". Aikido researcher Charlie Eriksen warned that the incident could be "catastrophic" if not detected, as the XRPL package forms the basis of "hundreds of thousands of applications and websites". GitHub download statistics show that the package was retrieved approximately 140,000 times just last week.

Aikido's AI-supported threat flow flagged five suspicious versions that had never appeared in the XRPL GitHub repository; this was an anomaly that warranted closer examination. The attacker carefully concealed a backdoor that silently exported wallet private keys in successive versions. Anyone with these keys could move funds without the owner's permission, necessitating a swift fix. The XRPL community released a clean version, v2.2.1, that invalidates the infected code on Tuesday, April 22, at 14:00 UTC, but Ripple has not yet made an official statement.

Developers are now racing to audit the build lines, clean up the affected versions, and rotate any keys that may have been exposed.

The breach coincided with a sensitive period for Ripple. In January 2024, co-founder Chris Larsen lost 112 million dollars in XRP to thieves who exploited the LastPass breach; after XRP's 294% rise last year, this amount is now worth 449 million dollars. Decentralized finance applications operating on the XRPL are currently securing around 80 million dollars in user deposits, and if the backdoor had remained active longer, all of these could have been vulnerable.