Monero Developers Have Patched the 'Burning Bug'

The developers of open-source cryptocurrency Monero have patched a bug that could allow an attacker to "Burn" the funds of an organization's wallet while only losing network transaction fees, according to an announcement published September 25.The bug was reportedly discovered after a community member described a hypothetical attack on the XMR subreddit.

The bug could purportedly affect merchants and organizations in the XMR ecosystem, enabling an attacker to trigger significant damage.

"An attacker first generates a random private transaction key. Thereafter, they modify the code to merely use this particular private transaction key, which ensures multiple transactions to the same public address are sent to the same stealth address. Subsequently, they send, say, a thousand transactions of 1 XMR to an exchange. Because the exchange's wallet does not warn for this particular abnormality, the exchange will, as usual, credit the attacker with 1000 XMR.".

While Monero notes that the attacker would not be able to directly accrue monetary gains with such an attack, "There are probably means to indirectly benefit."

Following the attack, the hacker sells the XMR for Bitcoin and then withdraws the BTC. As a result of the attack, the exchange is left with 999 unspendable or "Burnt" outputs of 1 XMR.Notably, the bug has not affected the protocol or the coin supply.

XMR, which claims to be a private and "Untraceable" cryptocurrency, was the target of fraudulent activities in the crypto space previously.

In June, a report published by security company Palo Alto Networks found that around 5 percent of all XMR in circulation at the time was mined maliciously.

XMR reportedly has an "Incredible monopoly" on the cryptocurrencies targeted by malware, with a total of $175 million mined maliciously.

XMR is currently the tenth largest digital currency, with a market capitalization of nearly $1.9 billion and a circulating supply of over 16 million, according to CoinMarketCap.

At press time, XMR is trading at around $114, up 0.68 percent over the last 24 hours.