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Moderate 62 Bitcoin

lnwire: validate MuSig2 nonce points on wire decode

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by Erick Cestari

73/100 · Adequate
lnwire: validate MuSig2 nonce points on wire decode

Add point-on-curve validation for MuSig2 public nonces at the TLV
decode layer. A MuSig2 nonce is 66 bytes (two 33-byte compressed
secp256k1 public keys). Previously, nonce bytes were accepted without
validation, with invalid points only failing later during MuSig2
session creation deep in the signing flow. Now, malformed nonces from
a peer are rejected immediately at decode time with clear errors.

This hardens all nonce-carrying messages: ClosingComplete (JIT closer
nonces in PartialSigWithNonce), ClosingSig (NextCloseeNonce), Shutdown,
ChannelReestablish, CommitSig, and others.
✓ Specific, descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This change tightens input checking for a special type of cryptographic value (a MuSig2 nonce) that peers send to each other in Lightning Network messages. Before, a peer could send bytes that looked like a nonce but were not valid points on the Bitcoin curve; those invalid values would only be caught later, deep inside the signing code. Now they are rejected immediately when the message is first decoded. This is a defensive hardening fix: it makes the protocol more robust against malformed or malicious peer input and prevents potential crashes or unexpected behavior in the signing flow.

Recommended action

Treat as a defensive hardening patch. Review whether any other custom cryptographic TLV records in lnwire lack point-on-curve or scalar-range validation, and consider applying similar decode-time checks. No immediate incident response is indicated by the commit alone, but operators should plan to upgrade to a release containing this fix to reduce exposure to malformed peer input.

Security signals we found

01

Input validation added at wire decode boundary for cryptographic public nonce points

02

Previously invalid secp256k1 points accepted in 66-byte MuSig2 nonce field could reach MuSig2 session creation

03

Malformed peer input now rejected with explicit errors before protocol state machine processing

04

Multiple P2P message types carrying nonces are hardened by the shared decode path

05

No CVE, advisory, or vendor security disclosure supplied with the commit

Risk score

Why this scored 62/100

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

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