The post XRPL fixes critical pre-mainnet flaw, but client apps remain at risk appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
XRP Ledger (XRPL) validators have put BatchV1_1 on a conditional path to activate at 14:06:41 UTC on Sept. 29, turning a security near-miss into a live test of the network’s amendment process and its surrounding software. On Sept. 22, xrpldashboard showed 30 of 35 trusted validators supporting the amendment, above its displayed 28-vote threshold. The majority first appeared on-ledger on Sept. 15. Under XRPL’s amendment rules, support must remain above 80% for two weeks. A fall to 80% or less ends the majority period, so the activation date remains conditional. Sept. 29 is the first production test of whether XRPL’s validator process, reference implementation, and client ecosystem converted a dangerous pre-mainnet flaw into usable atomic transaction infrastructure. The validator firewall worked before mainnet The original Batch amendment never activated on the XRP Ledger mainnet. In February, researchers found a critical authorization flaw while the amendment was still in its voting phase, and validators were advised to vote it down. XRPL Labs’ official vulnerability disclosure states that no funds were at risk. The flaw sat in the loop that checked the accounts authorizing a batch. If the code encountered a signer for a newly created account whose key matched that account, it returned success immediately instead of continuing through the remaining signers. An attacker could place that valid signer first, then add a forged entry purporting to authorize a victim account. If the amendment had gone live, the unchecked victim transaction could have executed without the victim’s keys. XRPL’s response came in two stages. Version 3.1.1 marked the original Batch and fixBatchInnerSigs amendments unsupported, blocking their activation. BatchV1_1 later replaced them with a rewritten authorization path and additional defenses. The episode was a failure caught at the boundary between software release and protocol activation. The XRPL Foundation’s final XLS-56 specification now…