The developers behind the Monero cryptocurrency released a patch for their software. This patch was created to address a bug that could potentially facilitate hackers to gain funds from cryptocurrency exchanges illegally.

This Monero team described it as a “burning” bug which depended on how the exchange platform was handling incoming transactions. Thankfully, this bug was fixed through the release of V0.12.3.0 of the Monero code.

Interestingly, this issue was uncovered through a theoretical question which was posted on Monero’s Reddit forum. The user asked that what would happen in a scenario where someone sends multiple transactions to a stealth address.

A stealth address allows a recipient to receive of send cryptocurrencies for one-time use. The stealth address can relay the funds to the real address of the receiver, making the transaction secure. In case of Monero and other privacy-centric cryptocurrencies, stealth addresses pose as payment proxies. Using stealth addresses provides an increased layer of security, privacy, and anonymity.

In the attempt to answer the user’s query on Reddit, the developers at Monero realized the flaw in their code pertaining to stealth addresses.

A potential hacker could request the cryptocurrency exchange to create multiple stealth addresses to send 1 Monero coin over a thousand times and gain equivalent Bitcoin for the transfer. The developers realized that due to a fault in the system’s network code, all the transactions would be reverted with Bitcoin while the code would only validate the first transaction and invalidate the remaining received funds due to the expiry of the stealth address. This process could allow attackers to steal significant amounts of funds from cryptocurrency exchanges within seconds.

Interestingly, the Bitcoin team also fixed a similar bug last week which could allow attackers to crash Bitcoin nodes and perform 51 percent attacks as a way to approve invalid transactions to steal funds from cryptocurrency holders.