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Moderate 64 Bitcoin

Kill the connection if a peer sends multiple ping requests in parallel (#3172)

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by pm47

81/100 · Strong
Kill the connection if a peer sends multiple ping requests in parallel (#3172)

We keep track of the number of pings that we have not yet sent a pong for. If there is more than 1, our peer is malicious and we close the connection.
✓ Specific, descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context✓ Links an issue, advisory, or supporting reference
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This update makes Eclair disconnect a Lightning peer if it sends more than one ping message before getting a reply. The goal is to stop a 'ping flood' attack, where a malicious peer could overwhelm the node with many ping requests and possibly cause it to run out of memory or become unresponsive. The change is defensive and includes a test showing the connection is closed when two pings arrive back-to-back.

Recommended action

Treat as a security hardening fix and include in release notes. Nodes should upgrade to avoid being a target of ping-flood resource exhaustion. No immediate incident response is required unless operators observe repeated disconnections from specific peers.

Security signals we found

01

Adds a counter to detect and terminate connections on parallel ping messages

02

Commit message describes the peer behavior as malicious and closes the connection

03

Includes a regression test named 'reject ping flooding'

04

Change is in the encrypted transport layer where all peer messages pass through

Risk score

Why this scored 64/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 18/30
Exploitability 14/25
Stealth signal 8/15
Affected reach 12/15
Confidence 8/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

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