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Low 37 Bitcoin

xpay: process channel_update from error for the current payment.

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by Rusty Russell

73/100 · Adequate
xpay: process channel_update from error for the current payment.

Applying it globally as `pay` did risks leaking information, but applying
it for retries doesn't really. And doing that is fairly easy with layers.

Changelog-Added: Protocol: `xpay` will now update for the current payment if it gets a `channel_update` in an error message.
Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
✓ Specific, descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This change improves the 'xpay' payment plugin in Core Lightning so that when a payment attempt fails and the error message contains a channel update, xpay uses that update only for the current payment's retry instead of applying it globally. The commit message explicitly says the old global behavior risked leaking information, and the new scoped behavior reduces that privacy risk while still helping payments succeed.

Recommended action

No immediate action required; this is a defensive privacy improvement. Operators and reviewers should be aware that xpay intentionally does not verify channel_update signatures in this path, relying on scoping to limit impact. If stronger assurance is desired, future work could add signature verification or rate-limiting of bias updates.

Security signals we found

01

Privacy improvement: channel_update from error is scoped to current payment only, avoiding global gossip leakage

02

Commit message states prior global application 'risks leaking information'

03

Signature on embedded channel_update is not verified

04

Channel update source/correctness is not validated beyond field parsing

05

Negative bias added against channel that provided the update

Risk score

Why this scored 37/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 8/30
Exploitability 5/25
Stealth signal 6/15
Affected reach 7/15
Confidence 7/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

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