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Low 46 Bitcoin

askrene: implement 10-second deadline.

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by Rusty Russell

78/100 · Adequate
askrene: implement 10-second deadline.

We have another report of looping. This maxparts code is being completely
rewritten, but it's good to have a catchall for any other cases which might
emerge.

I had to make it customizable since our tests under valgrind are SLOW!

Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
✓ Descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context✓ Mentions testing or verification
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This commit adds a 10-second safety cutoff to the routing plugin (askrene) that calculates payment paths in the Core Lightning node. Previously, the routing algorithm could keep looping or running for a long time while trying to find a way to send a payment. The change makes it stop and report failure if it exceeds the configured time limit, with a default of 10 seconds. It also exposes a new node option, askrene-timeout, so operators can adjust or disable it. This is a defensive hardening change rather than a fix for a specific remote exploit.

Recommended action

Treat as a hardening improvement. Operators running affected versions should ensure askrene-timeout is set appropriately for their hardware; the default 10 seconds is reasonable for production but may need raising on very slow or heavily loaded nodes. Monitor logs for 'timed out after deadline' to identify pathological routing inputs that may still need separate fixes.

Security signals we found

01

Denial-of-service mitigation: prevents unbounded CPU consumption during route computation

02

Adds configurable deadline to terminate long-running routing algorithm

03

Commit message references 'another report of looping' in askrene/maxparts code

04

Defensive hardening while larger rewrite is in progress

Risk score

Why this scored 46/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 12/30
Exploitability 5/25
Stealth signal 8/15
Affected reach 10/15
Confidence 7/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

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